My College Assignment is Your Way of Life

When I first started thinking about studying abroad, I imagined whisking away to some European country and living in a cute little apartment in the city for five plus months. While this was somewhat accurate, I didn’t realize how difficult the process to live abroad would be. I spent multiple hours, months in advance getting the proper paperwork just so I could study in Italy. I had to apply for a student visa which required me to visit the closest Italian consulate (2 hours away), get multiple papers signed and submitted to the Italian Embassy in Miami, and send my passport off to be stamped with my visa. The process was stressful, and long, but once I was boarded on the plane to Rome, I thought the rest would be a breeze.

 

In my English 463, Business Writing, class we did a group project which required us to become a company that was looking to open a subsidiary in a foreign country. Our assignment was to research and create a pamphlet giving all the details on how to make the smoothest move for the employees and families to this new country. My group was assigned Spain and we chose to locate our new office in Madrid. Our pamphlet was done on a computer with publisher capabilities, but you can see our group presentation to the class here. Before we started this project, I had no clue how difficult it was just to move abroad. You have to have multiple papers, forms of identification, and working visa.  If you’re thinking about getting a permanent estate, vehicle, or a license to drive that is a whole other beast. This project really opened my eyes to the difficulties of moving to a new country. It also taught me the importance of research when it came to moving to a new country.

 

I took this English class in the spring of my sophomore year, so it was almost a year before I moved to Rome. I didn’t really think much about this until I was in Rome. On our second day in Italy, all the foreign students were required to attend an orientation day. Here we learned more about the culture, what classes would be like, who to reach out to in emergencies, etc. It was also here that we started our “immigration process”. Before this date I really had no clue that this painstaking process would continue during my stay. Once I actually arrive in Rome, I was told that I had to have all visa receipts and permit to stay process papers with me at all times or I could be denied entrance back into Italy.

 

At this orientation we were required to scan our visas and sign up for a date to visit the Italian version of the DMV. Before that we had to visit the main Roman post office in order to get our forms submitted and signed to attend the immigration office. After all of that I ended up 45 minutes from the city in a strange compound like area waiting to be fingerprinted and sign paperwork. Here there were men, women, and families huddled around waiting for their appointments. There were also many people waiting on the outside of the barbed wire fencing. It seemed like they were waiting to get in, but most of them never entered. It was in this moment that I realized what was happening. These people were trying to immigrate into Italy.

 

Here I was, a 21 year old American student complaining about how I had to fill out a few forms and go to some special offices in order to study abroad: Not live, but study. I couldn’t imagine what these people must have had to go through in order to just get an appointment. I also wondered how long they had to wait in order to even be seen. I waited two hours just to get into the building where I was fingerprinted and then told to leave. Based on the time and effort I put into my English project about moving a company to another country I also knew just how much time these people had put into just learning how the immigration process took place. I couldn’t image the anxiety and stress these people were going through. This was their whole life. If something fell through with my paperwork, I could always return home to America, but I don’t know if these people were in the same situation.

 

After attending the office outside of Rome, I thought for sure the process was over and that they would mail me my permit. It was almost April and I had about four more weeks abroad. That is when I got an email saying that my permit to stay card was ready. So, on a Tuesday in April I picked up my permit to stay card. After almost eight months of applying to be a student in Italy I finally had my card, and I would only be in the country for another 30 days.

 

One class I took in Rome that put all of this into perspective was a class called Globalization and Crime. In this class we had open discussions on international issues like counterfeiting, antiquity crime, mafia activity, trafficking, etc. One topic that really hit home with me after witnessing this whole process of immigration was smuggling. After seeing and experiencing the lines and paperwork people who wish to immigrate legally have to encounter, I can see and understand how someone who were trying to get out of a dire situation that didn’t have all this time would resort to smuggling in order to immigrate into a country. This really put the whole situation into perspective. I was just looking to stay a maximum of six months and it took me over eight months of application time to get a permit. I don’t know the exact process of full immigration to Rome, but I can only image that if you want to live there permanently the process is much longer.

 

While this process was tedious, I just kept thinking back to all the people at the fingerprint office patiently waiting to be seen. Many of them were there before I arrived and were still waiting when I left. While I do not know their story after seeing how tedious the process is to move to Spain in my English class and then experiencing the permit to stay process, I can only imagine how many months and hours those people had been waiting and will continue to wait until they are finally finished with this multi-step process. This really put what I learned in my Globalization and Crime class into perspective. I now realize that I wouldn’t have the same understanding if I had not gone through an immigration process first hand.