A benefit of having friends move to Italy for a while meant that I have witnessed the process of going from Ann Arborite to Italian. I know that it is not a trivial process. I understand that, just like building a computer out of 10,000 dominoes, getting the right forms and documents in line to apply for an Italian visa and doing everything in the right order is a delicate process that requires careful planning and attention to fine detail.
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| Ben after successfully completing the visa application process |
"I'm going to start this early, and do everything I possibly can to make this an efficient and low stress process." said 2017 me.
Maybe next time.
Like everyone does when they start their career, in 2010 I spent many long hours pouring over my contract with Eastern Michigan University. One of the things that I was most excited about as a new professor was my ability to take a sabbatical every 7 years. The moment I read the line that describes this in the contract, I had already decided that we would grab the kid (we only had 1 at the time) and make the move to some part of Italy for some amount of time.
"What about Rome! Rome for 6 months! Wouldn't that be amazing?!" I said to Lindsay.
"I have a job! Ben will have school! What about 3 months?"
And the negotiations began.
My contract specifies that I can take a single semester at full pay, or a full year at half pay and stipulates the application process that I need to follow to make that happen. I knew that I had to apply for a leave the December before the academic year that I wanted to leave. So during the fall 2017 semester, I got started.
I decided that I wanted this to be a research sabbatical- at most 10% of my time would be devoted to teaching, but 0% would be fine. First problem: I have no colleagues in Italy. I know it may seem like Mars upper atmospheric research is so incredibly cool that there must be tens of thousands of people working in this area throughout the globe, but in reality, we are a reasonably small community and while there are people working on this stuff in many places in Europe, they mostly do not reside in Italy. And I'm going to Italy, damnit!
As it turns out, if you email a few department heads at universities in Italy and you tell them that you want to come over for a sabbatical and that you will have your own funding, they are more than happy to host you and help you find someone with which to collaborate. So, a host university and an approval from EMU for a winter 2019 sabbatical in hand, all that was left was to find a place to live, get a flight, and get a visa. And since I knew, I knew(!), about all the issues that Lynne and Tyler (the guinea pigs in this story mentioned above) went through, I would start learning about how one actually goes about obtaining a visa immediately and make sure to handle everything as early as possible to ensure a smooth, stress free, application process.
At the beginning of summer 2018 I emailed the University of Padova to ask what I needed to do to get the paperwork in order to eventually obtain my visa. I should say that I can't possibly overstate how grateful I am to the people at UNIPD, for most of whom I don't know their names, for handling everything for me. I have no idea what the process was like on their end, but I'm sure it entailed dealing with the Bureaucracy That Never Sleeps for several months. Padova said they would begin working on the initial documentation in June or July. When I checked in in July, they said that I should hear something by September. On October 20, I received my Convenzione di Accoglienza (hosting agreement), the document that needs to be created and signed to be able to apply for a Nulla Osta (official authorization to do something in Italy as a foreigner), which is needed to apply for a visa. This, I thought was fine. I signed it and got it in the mail the same day and it was back to UNIPD within a week. I had plenty of time to obtain the Nulla Osta and go through the visa application process.
We bought our flight tickets back in September. As part of my agreement with Lindsay to do sabbatical over the winter instead of the fall, we planned to spend Christmas in Europe. This meant that our flight out of Chicago would be on December 22, one day after Ann Arbor Public Schools goes on holiday break. So when December 4 rolled around and I had still not received the Nulla Osta (and thus not yet been able to even apply for a visa), I started to get a little nervous. In the end though, it seems that Italians always come through and I found the document waiting for me in my inbox on the 6th. I knew at that point that all would be well. I would go get an appointment at the consulate, the visa application review would take a couple weeks, and I'd be all set. So online I went to reserve an appointment. Next available appointment: January 22.
Needless to say, it all worked out. I begged the consulate to help me out. They found a time for me to come in that week. I got all my paperwork in order and brought $135 to the Italian Consulate of Detroit. It took no more than 2 minutes for the wonderful human being* at the consulate to review things and tell me she had everything she needed. When I asked how long it might take to hear back about approval given that my flight was coming up in a week and a half, she said, of course, that she couldn't tell me that. Nothing more to be said or done, I left my passport on the 18th floor of a beautiful old building in Detroit and went to consider the most difficult decision visitors to Detroit must face: Lafayette or American Coney Island for lunch.
I was only worried about the fact that I was getting ready to go to Europe in just over a week and was no longer in possession of my passport for about 24 hours. I received notification that my visa application had been approved and that I could pick it up any time the day after I applied. Everything was fine.
I don't know how I feel about the notion that Italian Bureaucracy Never Sleeps. At times, it feels like all it does is sleep, and once every few months it wakes up to be productive and give you the sense that everything is working as it should and life will be just fine. Then you wait again. On the other hand, maybe I should remember that the phrase "va bene" is used ubiquitously for a reason. I mean, everything was fine. Any stress that I had about getting this done in time didn't really do any good. Everyone but me probably knew the entire time that it would be fine. The process moves slow, but only as slow as it has to. I didn't need my visa two weeks ago. I need it on Dec 22.
Still, I think in reality Bureaucracy Never Sleeps means that the process never ends. I'm not sure that Lynne and Tyler ever finished all the paperwork that they needed to deal with to be Italian residents before they moved back to the US. I have a visa. Lindsay, Ben, and Ethan? They don't, which means that right now, they are supposed to leave Europe within 90 days after we arrive. The process will continue when we get there and will probably conclude the week before we leave in May. I'll be worried about it. It will be fine.
* Email inquiries with the Detroit Consulate were responded to almost instantly. I asked dozens of questions and said "solo un'altra domanda" (only one more question) probably 10 times and they were always answered quickly and precisely, with seemingly infinite patience.
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If you want to know the details, in order to get a visa you should:
- Start here: http://vistoperitalia.esteri.it/home/en. You enter your nationality, citizenship, and how long you need to stay (more or less than 90 days) and you get the instructions. Unless you, like I did, want a research visa (or several other types of visa). For some reason, information about certain visa types doesn't show up on the english site, so you should go to the Italian version of the site listed above. You speak Italian, right?
- The instructions for a research visa say that you need a:
- Passport
- Visa Photographs
- Nulla Osta
- Hosting Agreement
- Proof of employment at your home institution
- Completed application
- There are other things you need that aren't on that site but can be found by reading about this sort of thing on various websites:
- Flight details/proof of means of entering Italy
- Proof of income while abroad
- Lodging details (hotel/airbnb receipt or essentially a notarized contract from a landlord)
- Proof of travel insurance of at least 30K
- To get the Nulla Osta, you need the hosting agreement. To get the hosting agreement, you need proof of income while you are abroad. To get both the hosting agreement and the Nulla Osta, you need the help of some wonderful people in Italy at your host institution. Make sure to thank them.
- When you have everything together, make an appointment at the consulate that has jurisdiction over your local residence in the US. These can book out over a month in advance.
- Bring your documentation to the Consulate on the day of your appointment with a cashier's check for the appropriate amount.
- Wait some period of time for a friendly email that says, "va bene".
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