The Cosenza (a city) Questura (immigration office) has a dark reputation. Ask anyone navigating Italian residency in this region of Calabria, and they will tell you that office is the worst in the country.
I have been there seven times in five years.
Before anyone reaches for the comments to tell me I must be doing something catastrophically wrong—there is a reason:
I came in on an elective residency permesso (i.e., a retirement visa that prohibits you from working) before converting it, with considerable difficulty and mountains of paperwork, to a lavoro autonomo permesso (i.e., a self-employment visa that does permit you to work).
A permesso is your “permission” to stay in Italy; without it, you must leave the country. So, it’s important.
Several of the trips were not actually renewals of my permesso. They were re-dos, forced by an immigration officer, because I had arrived without some essential document of whose existence I’d been completely unaware.
On another visit, I was turned away for not having worked enough to justify staying, which was curiously comical given that the elective residency visa I started on came with the instruction that if I wanted to work, I needed to return to my home country.
So: seven visits.
Now the surprise—and it will surprise the veteran applicants most of all: it has gotten better. Much better. There was a version of this experience that meant standing in line four hours, being sent home, and coming back for another four before you reached a counter. The last time I dropped my permesso “kit” (a packet of paperwork) and paid the fees at the post office—where the applications are submitted—the wait for an appointment with the Questura was fifteen months. This time it was three months for me, two for my husband.
And another positive development. They have opened up the walls inside and added numbered sportelli. You no longer feel like livestock in a chute, waiting your turn at the stun gun.
But better is not the same as good. Here is everything I have learned.
You’ve gone to the post office and got your kit (if you’re lucky, on the first attempt and they haven’t run out). You’ve been assigned a date and a time to show up at Via Carlo Cattaneo, 87100 Cosenza CS.
Ignore the appointment time. Trust me.
Unless you live in Cosenza, get a hotel the night before. You’ll want to arrive early, fresh, and ready for battle, not frayed from a pre-dawn drive down the autostrada. (I have done this version too, and it’s horrible.) I stay at the Ariha Hotel Cosenza. It is not glamorous. It is clean, you can pull right up to the door to check in, there is a parking lot beside the building, and the restaurant is, improbably, sensational. Seriously. Book early. They fill up.
The morning of your appointment, if you are driving, park a few blocks away at Central Parking Sas di Frontera e C. They open at 7:30 am. Expect a gruff, oddly funny attendant, trying to practice his rough English. He says he speaks German. They give a good car wash if you need one, €25 for the wash and parking.
A note about trains. I’ve done this by train many times. Once, on the morning of my appointment, the train was delayed an hour, then cancelled. I ran to a nearby car leasing shop and jumped into a car with no clutch and made it in the nick of time. On another trip, I was picked up by my hotelier because she said there wouldn’t be a taxi at the station when I arrived. And yet another time, I arrived at the station and found a taxi to the Questura, then called another when I was done. Whatever your luck, arriving the night before will decrease your anxiety.
Get to the parking lot at 7:50 a.m. Then walk to the Questura, where you will find a smattering of people. This morning there were two.
What you do next is not on any official sheet. Stay near the bottom of the stairs, behind whoever got there before you, and hold your position. Lean on the pole. Claim it as your own. Others will do the same.
More people arrive. Some queue, some cut, and it is infuriating, but by then it matters less than you would think, because you have made eye contact with all the others who turned up before 8 am. You know who was first. They know who was first. Six or eight of you, abiding by an informal order that exists nowhere on paper but that everyone present will nonetheless honor.
You have built an unidentifiable energy together. You are a tribe.
Then the lawyer comes. You will recognize her: on the phone, arms full of paperwork. Her four or five clients will arrive well after you. She and they will likely go up first. Let it go.
There are three sportelli (windows) inside the office. The first two are for permessi. The third, I am fairly sure, is for amnesty and refugee cases, which is where she is headed, so unless you are a refugee, she has not actually cut in front of you. She has gone to a different window (the officers all know and chat with her).
Around 8:30, maybe 8:45, an officer comes down the outer staircase. Have your hologram receipt and your appointment letter out and separate from everything else. Hold them up and move forward. She will not check the date or the time, but she does need to see them before she lets you mount the stairs. She may tell you which window to take.
Note: Things get physical at this point. There is yelling and shoving. Stay strong and don’t be shy.
The small room at the top of the stairs fills with about twenty people fanned across the three sportelli, and no one new comes in until every one of you has been processed. Then the next group rushes in.
Now comes the part I most want you to carry with you. Expect a curveball.
The immigration officer will ask for a document you do not have. Assume failure. Assume you are coming back in two or three weeks to do this again. The document they invariably do ask for first is the Certificato contestuale di Stato di famiglia, di Residenza, the family residence certificate, and it blindsided me the first time.
Every time since, I’ve heard the officers ask it of someone who failed to bring it, and watched that person get turned away.
So bring everything.
Passport. Your previous permesso, if you have one. Four photos, though they will take only one. Bring whatever else they decide to want that day, which is highly unpredictable, so bring all of it.
One year, they rejected my photo because it matched the one already on my previous permesso. It must be updated, they said. There is a camera shop on the corner called Just Married S.A.S. di Cottone Daniela e C. for precisely this emergency. Do not wait until the morning of your appointment to deal with your photos. Take new ones every time you go.
You know you are safe when they take your fingerprints.
To celebrate, or to recover, there is a cafe up the street called Blu Bar. Coffee, a glass of wine, a working bathroom. Whichever the morning has earned.
I have walked out of this building in tears, dejected, certain I would never be allowed to stay in Italy.
I have walked out of it elated, flooded with adrenaline, weirdly encouraged. On one visit, they waved me behind the plexiglass to take photos together with the officers because I was a Hollywood film producer.
It made no difference whatsoever the next time, when I was turned away for not having brought the right paperwork—AGAIN.
I am, against all reason, looking forward to my next trip to this dreadful place. Ideally, for a Permesso di Soggiorno EU per Soggiornanti di Lungo Periodo, the one that lasts ten years. Even more ideally, an Italian passport will not be long after. Incrociamo le dita.
Let me know if you have any tips, and I’ll include them to help others!
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Bring everything every time you go. Great advice.
Why can’t this be one of the aspects of Italy that’s changing so quickly?