Double the bureaucracy to change our address

PdiS address change

When we arrived in Italy we were living in Anzio which is in Provincia di Roma and that is who issued our permesso di soggiorno. To obtain our residenza in Ascoli Piceno we need to have our permesso di soggiorno changed to Provincia d’Ascoli Piceno. In Anzio we went to the local Questura and applied in person but late last year the Italian government changed this process.

We went to the Questura in Ascoli Piceno to see about having our address changed as I had read where other expats did this in a very simple process, some where the name was typed on the back with an official stamp. For us, not so simple. We were told we had to use the new system which is done through the Officio Postale. This is one bureaucracy, the Officio Postale, helping another bureaucracy, the Questura! We went to the Postale and picked up the necessary packet full of forms and instructions in bureaucratic Italian, and tried to figure out which of the forms we actually needed to use and what we needed to include with them.

After trying to decipher some of the language and reading through the Postale and Questura web-sites and still being confused, Valerie found a list of agencies on the internet that are supposed to provide assistance with completing the forms. I went to one of these agencies near our apartment and they directed me to another agency called CISL who would be able to help us. I looked up this agency on the internet and they appear to be a consortium of trade unions, but when we went in to explain our problem they politely offered to help, despite the fact that we do not have work permits for Italy.

The lady who helped us, Mary Lou, is from the Philippines and has lived in Italy for 25 years. She took control of what was needed, advising us of what documents we needed, some of which were not listed on any other sources we had searched. We needed to have our landlords write a brief letter stating that we were using their apartment, copies of every page in our passports, copies of our permesso di soggiorno and a form that stated we are who we say we are and of course a set of tax stamps for 14.62 Euro that I purchased at the tobaccaria. Mary Lou explained that they would input our information into the computer so there would be no need to complete the forms supplied by the Offico Postale and said we should come back in a few days.

When we returned at the end of last week to the CISL office we were provided with computer print-outs of our data and the documents we had previously provided. We were instructed to take these to the Offico Postale where we would sign them and they would be sent off to Roma. We followed these instructions, paid another 30 Euro each to have the packets forwarded by the Postale and now await notice that our permesso di soggorni have been updated.

When that will be…we don’t know. Hopefully not the seven months we waited for our original permesso di soggiorno.