Italian bureaucracy - parte due

When she picked up the single piece of paper and held it up, turned it around, and examined it as if it was foreign matter, I knew I was in the presence of a professional. When she sent us off to get the extra, “surprise” photos – not published in the official pre-requisites – and did not tell us about the required franco bolo (official stamp, which we didn’t have, of course) until we returned once again, I acknowledged that I had underestimated her: I was dealing with a true master. And her cool, calm, trance-like demeanour, patently oblivious to the struggle raging on the other side of the glass divide, rendered her the quintessence itself – bureaucracy in its purest form.

The residency permit, or permesso di soggiorno, is a somewhat crucial document in order for us to stay in Italy legally. Maria, an EU citizen, successfully applied for hers a year ago, but they wouldn’t give me mine at the time because our wedding certificate was not in Italian. With the translation duly in hand, last week I went to get mine.

Now, last time we went to the immigration office, it was a breeze – very few people, little to no waiting, and no sense of disorganization at all. Turns out we went at a time reserved for EU citizens. Being a US/SA national, I had to go in the non-EU citizen time slot. And what a difference.

“Bun fight” is the first term that springs to mind. “Chaos” is another. Bruno Bozzetto (www.infonegocio.com/xeron/bruno/italy.html) does a caricature of Italians queues, and it seems the free-for-all phenomenon he depicts infects everyone that steps within the country’s borders – Indians, Moroccans, Russians, Slavs, and who knows what else squeezing, pushing, edging in a shapeless mass, like iron filings around a magnetized pole, in a zealous surge to reach a singular, common goal – the counter window, and the clerk behind it.

On reflection, all this crazy effort seems entirely counter-intuitive, given what each aspiring resident is striving for – to speak with a bureaucrat. Somehow it reminds me of a moth fluttering around a flame, constantly drawn in until – zap! – suddenly it’s all over, and there’s just a pile of ashes left behind.

So there we are, future ash piles all of us, driving towards the flame. Once you get there, there’s a 50% chance you’ll having everything you need. Some of the missing pieces you can get in short order, and return … but not to the front of the queue. You join once again at the back, and you have to go through the whole bun fight again.

The clerks behind their glass protectors are singularly unmoved by the chaos happening on “the other side”. Their eyes drift calmly across the swarm of sweating faces and hands thrusting reams of paper at them, each of them desperately hoping that they’ll be chosen. Because if they’re not, it’s going to be another 20 minutes – at least – before the clerk will be ready to select their next victim.

We had to go through this 3 times. First, I didn’t have photographs. There is a photo machine on the premises, but it requires exact change, and most patrons can barely put together the €5, let alone the right change for it. I must have asked 15 people for change, without success. Maria scored gold on her first try.

So off I go to get the photos, returning just as Maria gets to the counter. All’s going well until we find out I need 6 photos, not four. Off again, this time to return as a combatant without rights, just like everybody else. Almost through, and then she (the same clerk) informs us we need a €14.62 franco bolo, available at most tabacchii. We didn’t have one.

Interestingly, this information was available to her when she sent us off to get the photographs. But she failed to avail us of it. I’m not convinced her omission was accidental, but I’m also not sure it was conscious. Bureaucracy, it seems, sustains itself through its inefficiencies and the ultimate capitulation of its victims – you endure because you have to, taking so many whippings in the process as to ultimately be at the mercy of the system. The clerks themselves are part of the system, perhaps even unaware of their own role in sustaining it. Brilliant, when you think about it.

So off we go again again, this time off the premises. The first tabacchi didn’t have any franco bolo left (of course), so we had to go to another. Back into the fray.

Within sight of the finishing post once more, and this time Maria contrives to contribute to the mix, asking about Julius’ residency, and confusing the matter by saying he’s German and producing an American passport. This, naturally, drew their attention away from that final staple and paper clip that would seal the deal, to become engrossed in a discussion with each other about the procedures in such a case. To my relief, they eventually get back to my application, but the distraction has cost me several places in the next queue I’m destined for – mug shot, fingerprints, vital statistics, etc. It probably cost me an hour, but we did get Julius’ residency after all.

This last wait gave me the opportunity to catch up on some reading – I’m no fool, I come prepared – and also to watch bureaucracy in action. The whole system, it appears, is controlled by paper. I use this term as if the paper itself has a presence, an existence, such is the respect and submission of the clerks to those thin, square-edged power-mongers. They seem mesmerized when they pick up single pieces of paper, studying them as if they’ve never seen such a thing – a piece of paper on its own, how can it be? – only to snap into their automaton characters when the single sheafs finally find mates, and are bonded together with a staple or a paper clip. It’s almost as if the clerks get into a trance when they get the feel of multiple pages in a stack – forms, transcriptions, photos, photocopies – moving through the motions, reaching for the stapler, the stamp, the pile of paper clips, slapping the package onto another pile in the application’s journey through the warren of halls that sustain this bureaucracy. This is their world.

It’s also somewhat puzzling (although it shouldn’t be) that two of the tools of their trade – stapler and stamp – are almost always misplaced when they’re looking for them. To start with, there was only one stamp between 3 clerks – how this doesn’t launch them into fits of insecurity is beyond me. They also have a habit of passing you new forms to fill out, and then not giving you a pen, leaving you to the whims of your surrounding foreigners to yield up theirs.

When I finally got out of there, there was one other applicant left, waiting to get fingerprinted. The clerks had gone to lunch, and it felt serene and calm, showing no signs or scars of the morning’s struggles. As I walked out, I could almost feel the building sigh with relief.