Patience urged on Italy’s soggiorno backlog

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Patience urged on Italy’s soggiorno backlog
By Kent Harris, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Saturday, January 12, 2008

Piles of residency permits stacked up on U.S. bases around Italy should be getting smaller over the next few weeks.

U.S. and Italian officials reached an agreement in late December on how to issue soggiorno permits to U.S. citizens attached to missions run by the Department of Defense and State Department. The two governments had differed over Italy’s implementation of new regulations in January 2007, resulting in a backlog of more than 3,000 applications on U.S. facilities around the country.

Ben Duffy, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Rome, said the two sides agreed to some changes in the process, but “from the standpoint of the individual applying, it’s a process that closely resembles the former one.”

That process varies from base to base. But it differs from the Italian mandate for all foreigners in the country that they obtain and fill out documents at the post office and pay a series of fees. The U.S. maintained that fees shouldn’t be charged under existing agreements and that bases or consulate offices should be able to act as intermediaries in the process.

Some civilians in the Naples area already have new soggiornos, according to Lt. Cmdr. Wendy Snyder, a public affairs spokeswoman for U.S. Navy Region Europe. Snyder said 84 permits have been processed through a local police headquarters in Naples. Others have been turned in to the two offices that handle such permits in the greater Naples area. The base hopes to get about a two-week turnaround from the time applications are submitted until the permits are issued, she said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=51573



uhc comment: More info on the soggiorno -->

http://italy.angloinfo.com/countries/italy/residency.asp
http://www.expatsinitaly.com/arrival/cartasoggiorno.html