CHIAVARI, Italy – For the
record, my phone problems have been resolved and I am just about problem free –
at least as far as getting settled in a new town. I think what surprised me the most
about this move to Liguria was the amount of paperwork I had to plow through to
do it. I’m still puzzled by it.
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| Commune of Chiavari |
Back in the day when I
moved to Saronno from Milan, there were the same services to contact, electric,
gas and telephone and they only required a simple phone call. I never had reams
of forms come in the mail that I to fill out and send back and pages of
contracts in print so small it looks like Morse Code.
A quick phone calls to
Enel and I had power and gas service, another call to the phone company and I
had a phone line, a quick trip to the commune, the town hall in Saronno, and I
was a resident. The ladies in the Saronno Registry Office even sent me a post
card a few weeks later saying that they noticed I was born in Syracuse and
therefore I could apply for citizenship if I wanted to. I later explained that
I was born in Syracuse, New York, not Siracusa, Sicily and we all had a good
laugh over that one.
But to get to the point,
it was all fairly simple to do – and why it was more complicated here is
something I’m still trying to work out. When
I applied for residency in Saronno all I had to do was give them my new
address. Here in Chiavari I had to show my passport and the document that
proves I am in Italy legally.
The guy at the Registry
Office was very nice. It was only when he began to slowly leafed through all of
the pages of my passport that I started to get butterflies in my stomach. What
he was looking for? It’s a new passport
with hardly any stamps in it, so there really isn’t anything to see. But there he
was, taking his time, looking at each page. Then he closed my passport and
looked over at me and said, ‘how beautiful these drawings of America are’, and
smiled. When he finished entering my data into his computer, he handed back my
documents and then gave me another official looking piece of paper with the
instructions to take it to the Health Office and chose my primary care
physician.
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| Left to Right: Manuela, Gui and Dottoressa Loredana |
The next day, with the
document from the Registry in hand, I went up to the Health Office. Unlike the Health Office in Saronno where
there is usually a half hour wait, within five minutes I was in front of a
clerk explaining why I was there. Then another clerk came over and the two of
them started discussing something or other and they decided it was best to call
the ‘Doctoressa’. Within minutes the Doctoressa appeared and she got right down
to business.
The first question she asked
me was if I worked. It caught me off-guard and didn’t know what to say. I
didn’t want to say that I was working because then she would ask me to bring in
some kind of pay stub, and I didn't want to say I wasn't working because in
reality I am. So I mumbled something about working but only for a company in
the United States which is true, but would be more true if I took out the word ‘only’.
It turned out she didn't care about that
part, what she wanted to know was if I had ever worked in Italy and if I had
paid into the health care system.
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| Paperwork Central |
Well that was easy, the
answer was yes. But could I prove it? That was a little more difficult. I said
yes again, knowing it would mean going back to my apartment and trying to find
the box with those documents in it. Now let me think. Was that box in the pile
of boxes near the door, or in the boxes under my bed, or maybe in the boxes in
the kitchen area? This was going to take
a bit of sleuthing.
But find them I did. After
thinking about it, I realized that part of the new, stricter controls on
residency and health care benefits has to do with the problems Italy has had in
the past with illegal immigrants, problems that didn't exist when I first moved
to Saronno.
I can’t fault the Italians
for wanting the people who are applying for health care benefits to have at
least paid into the system at one time or another. With the second best health
system in the world, it is a benefit that should not be abused, so if it takes
me four days to dig up and bring in the documents they need, it takes me four
days. In the end four days is a small price to pay for what I get in return.
But the best part is my dining room table is no longer covered with papers and
documents and the apartment is kind of starting to feel like home – well almost.
For more about the Italian
health care system see This Italian Life blog post “Life: Italian Health Care System” of
February 7, 2010.
