Trailing Spouse - 13 settembre, 2013

I am still confused about my official status in this country and maybe Italy is still confused about me. Dave is considered an expatiate which means he is temporarily residing in a country where he is not a citizen. Italy issued him a work visa after we visited the Italian Consulate in Detroit last May, his company submitted a small forest's worth of forms and we dug up original papers including our college diplomas and our marriage license. The company has had two different consultants assist us with 3 visits to official offices here in Italy to apply for official residency. No one speaks English in the offices and the most important task seems to be stamping documents with a huge stamp and adding it to a file folder 4 inches thick with our documents.

I have been told to accompany Dave to each meeting and then at each stop, I am told that I don't need any approvals because I apparently don't have any official status here and am still considered to be a tourist.  Even Dave's company designates me as a "trailing spouse". I have been told that eventually I will be given an Italian identity card but first they need another document from Dave's company that will verify that Dave makes enough money to provide "maintenance" for me. They don't seem to care or want to know that I have my own income and don't have to be a kept woman.

We joke about it but our last visit to the Questura (Police Headquarters) to be fingerprinted and interviewed was quite sobering as we stood in line for over an hour with a group of people from a variety of countries. It was very obvious that we can go through this process with assistance and just feel inconvenienced but for many of the people there, this process was difficult and scary. It seems that the terminology people use is related to socio-economic status; professionals are referred to as expats while laborers are called immigrants. It was humbling because at the end of the day, we are in the same situation as the people we were standing with; we are all waiting for official recognition of our status. Italy, like most European countries has many foreigners trying to enter and as this country struggles with high unemployment and economic problems, the process has become more complicated.

I believe standing in line in a hot room with 30 other immigrants changed the way we think about what we take for granted.