The always interesting challenge of renewing a permesso di soggiorno

Obtaining or renewing one’s permesso di soggiorno is always an adventure, as the procedure seems to differ from place to place and year to year. Since Lucy is not an Italian citizen, when we purchased our home in Montecarlo in 2015, we went to the Questura in Lucca in the spring of 2016, and within about two months and four visits, we obtained her permesso, good for five years. After that, we registered her residency in Montecarlo, and she received her carta d’identità.

Lucy in 2016 with her permesso di soggiorno.

Her permesso expired in 2021. We didn’t really notice at first, because it was filed away in a safe place. If Lucy needed to show proof of identity, we just used her American passport or her Italian carta d’identità, which does not expire until 2027. Because of Covid, we had not gone to Italy in 2020 or the spring of 2021, and that probably contributed to our lack of awareness that her permesso had expired. However, we were here twice in 2022, and we could have tried to renew it then.

Well, in any case, we had to go back to the Questura to see what we needed to do. I knew there might be some procedure to make an appointment through the post office or online, but we decided to take our chances by going directly to the Questura, which had worked fine for us in 2016. We arrived around 11 a.m., which we learned in later trips was a good idea, because by then the crowds from the early morning had mostly been served, and we were almost the only ones in sportello 1, which is the permesso line for nonimmigrants. I showed the clerk the expired permesso, and she gave us a list of what we needed and an official appointment, which was for April 14, about three weeks later.

We gathered all the documents, which included copies of our passports, Italian identity cards, a certified estratto of our marriage registered in Pescia, and proof of our residency and stato di famiglia from Montecarlo. We also obtained a marca di bollo at a tobaccaio and paid a fee at the Montecarlo post office. The last item on the list was proof of reddito, or income. For this I printed out Social Security benefit verification letters for both of us, which I translated myself with some help from Google and DeepL Translate.

On our return trip, the Questura was packed, and the line for sportello 1 was long. We had arrived about 40 minutes before our appointment because I had heard from others that even with an appointment, they had to wait in line with everyone else. I figured that if we got in line early, maybe we could get in before our appointment, but that didn’t look promising. In fact, there were still many people ahead of us even as our appointment time was nearing, and when the clerk finished with one person, she just took the next person in line, without checking to see if anybody had an appointment.

An official looking man came into the crowd to talk to someone, and I thrust my appointment paper in front of him as he began to pass inside. He took it with him and brought it back a minute later, saying that we would be called soon. But about 15 minutes after our appointment time, we still hadn’t been called. When the clerk from line 1 finished with the next person, I jumped in from the side and showed her my appointment document. She moved us to the head of the line, explaining to the next person that our appointment took precedence.

She checked each item off the list, and things were looking great until she came to the last item, the proof of income. The documentation was insufficient, she said. I don’t know exactly why, but it seemed that the translation was not acceptable because it was not done by an official translator. Why this should be important for a financial document I don’t know, as numbers are the same in Italian as they are in English.

She told me to go to my bank and get an estratto of my account. “How much money do I need in the account?” That’s not important, she answered. But then she said that Lucy could still get a permesso good for five years. If we had the proper documentation of income, it would be good for 10 years. This was on a Friday, so we had to wait until Monday morning to go to our bank in Pescia. I told the clerk there that we needed proof that we had a checking account, and then we rushed back to the Questura with the document.

Not good enough, the clerk said. The document just shows we have an account, but not any income. Go online and print out some of your monthly statements. So on Tuesday we went back, but there was a different clerk this time. I was not optimistic, and my doubts were well founded. First, she did not like the fact that the statements I’d printed were from my American bank account, but I had no choice in that, because that’s where our pensions are deposited. I transfer money to our Italian account when needed, but only once or twice a year, to avoid excessive transfer fees.

Then she told me it was too late anyway, because the permesso was already in the process. I think it’s quite likely she could have found our application and changed it to 10 years if she had tried, but it was obvious she didn’t want to. I could have raised a fuss, but we were still on track to get a permesso for five years, so I decided not to rock the boat. My Italian is adequate but not great, and we had given it our best shot. Supposedly we will get a phone call when it is ready, though when we got Lucy’s permesso in 2016, the phone call never came.

One bit of advice I can pass on to anyone else in our situation: It is probably best to try getting an appointment online or at the post office. On the days we came at 8:30 a.m., the doors to the Questura were closed and people were forced to wait outside. Every so often, a clerk would open the door and call someone’s name. When a customer would open a door to exit, the Questura employees would make sure no one entered without an appointment. However, around 10:30 to 11 a.m., they stopped guarding the doors, and pretty soon everyone pushed inside and formed lines. This is how we got in, and we learned that it made no sense to show up too early.

There is a sign on the Questura door explaining how to make an appointment. We did hear several people complaining that they had called to make an appointment, but nobody ever answered the phone. The sign also includes a very long email address. Whether the people who were called inside had made an appointment by phone, email, post office or other government website, I don’t know. The purpose of this account is to share what we experienced, not to give authoritative directions on the best way to get a permesso. It’s pretty obvious I’m not qualified to do that.

Sign on the wall outside the Lucca Questura building.

Anyway, it appears we’ve once again stumbled through the process successfully enough. Even though it could never be classified as a pleasant experience, I have to say that I get a certain degree of satisfaction being able to negotiate though the bureaucracy. It’s like a game, and while getting a 10-year permit would have been equivalent to hitting a home run, I’m still happy to settle for a solid double this time. Maybe next time I’ll get a little more lift and knock it out of the park.

Update September 11, 2023: Score one for Lucy; she has a new (and improved) permesso di soggiorno.