Immigration From Another Perspective…

I’ve always been proud of my early American Revolutionary War ancestry.  Well, that is, since I first became aware of it while doing research on Ancestry.com and getting involved in the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).  I’ve now traced my ancestry back through many branches. Most came to the new world, the colonies, for religious freedom. These included Puritans, Quakers, Catholics, and Protestants… all under the umbrella of Christianity.  But don’t think that once here they were all willing to grant religious freedom to others.  I have an ancestor that was hung by the Puritans in Massachusetts colony for being a Quaker.

Growing up, all I knew about my family’s ancestry (on my Dad’s side) came from a few hand-written notes from my Great-Grandmother and some sketches of a family tree that my Aunt had created some 40 or 50 years ago. My Mother had been proud of her Irish history on her Mom’s side, and she had told me that we came from Mayo County in Ireland. That was about it. I later found out more history on my Mom’s side later from an ancestry book that had been written about her Father’s side of the family, the Hallman’s who came from Germany in the 1700s. Also, I reconnected with a cousin who had been doing family genealogy on my Mom’s Mom’s side of the family and learned a lot more about our Irish and English roots, the Irish side having come over during the potato famine in the mid-1800s.

I also determined that contrary to a family legend, we had no Native American/First Peoples blood. This was proved by taking three different DNA tests (Ancestry.com, 23 and Me, and FamilyTreeDNA). So, essentially, all my ancestors were immigrants to North America in the near past 150 – 350+ years ago.

There were also no “wealthy” ancestors as far as I knew growing up. My Grandfather on my Dad’s side was a poor Methodist preacher’s kid, one of nine children. My Grandfather once told me a story of how he used to pick cotton when he was young. The canvas sack was long and drug along the ground as he filled it. He was paid 25 cents a filled bag, which took all of a long hot day in Oklahoma to fill. Of course, that was far better and easier than having to do that day in and day out for no pay like those who were enslaved. In my later research, I did find some connections to slave holders in the South, which shocked and saddened me to my core.

My Mother’s Mother’s parents were an interesting couple. He was Irish, she was English. They met in Wisconsin and ended up moving to California in the early 1900s. They had four children, but only three survived to adulthood.  My Grandmother was the youngest. I’ve learned from census data that my Great-grandfather was  a teamster, a chocolatier, and a farmer. My Grandmother attended the Gabriel School in Santa Monica, a school for poor immigrants, which had a very integrative and inclusive way of educating the young that was ahead of its time. If you look at my Grandmother’s Kindergarten photograph from 1921 (see attached, she is the one with "X") there are a variety of ethnicities in the photograph!

We were fortunate to grow up and have access to excellent education and work opportunities in the U.S. We moved to Genoa (Genova), Italy in January of this year after about a year and half of planning (and several years of dreaming!). This is a kind of reverse immigration story. We both love our country and our democracy.  However, being retired gave us an opportunity to do something different. We love Italy for its extensive history, amazing food, art, and culture! We have traveled around the world, and still want to travel more, but we want to experience living here as a resident and create our own “La Dolce Vita!” We realize that we are very fortunate to be able to do so.

Yesterday, my husband and I experienced another step in our own immigration story. This is a continuation of the requirements that we needed to go through for acquiring our Permesso di Soggiorno (Residence Permit). When we first arrived, we were required to go to the Poste Italiano within 8-days, submit required paperwork (photos of all the pages of our passports, updated financial statements), and pay our fees.  We were given a receipt that had an appointment date with the Questura (the Local Police Department). Yesterday, the 7^th, was our date! Our assigned appointments were at 8:40 and 8:50 am.  We were hoping that we could go in together, but weren’t sure. We had read descriptions of the process on several Expat facebook pages, some of which were a bit horrific, describing crowds standing in line for hours.  We decided to get up at 6 am and leave by 6:45 to be there at 7:00 am. It was a very cold morning, we dressed warmly in layers and donned hats, scarves, and warm coats.

When we arrived, there were already about 40-50 people of various nationalities. Most looked as confused as I felt. There were a couple of almost lines formed, but many other people were just standing in the general vicinity. As the time got closer to 8 am, many more people had arrived and the crowd pushed closer to the doors that were covered with a metal expandable fencing. At just past 8 am, a police representative unlocked the fencing and pushed it back away from the glass front doors.  He made some announcements. All I understood was, “Ukraini,” and “La’” meaning, Ukraineans go over there. He pointed to another door that was back behind where we were standing. Suddenly, I felt like a fish swimming against the current, as about 30-40 people with Ukrainian passports pushed past us to gather where they had been directed.

I saw another man ask a police man at the front a question.  I decided to see if I could go ask if we were at the right place.  He looked at my receipt with the appointment date and time, and said, “Va bene,” which means good or alright.  He indicated that I could enter the door. I waved back to Steve to come join me and explained to the policeman, “Mio Marito!”  He let us both through.  Once inside, we didn’t know where to go.  A few other people were also inside, confused.  Another police representative came by and directed us to a hallway. We rounded the corner and saw the sign in both Italian and English that said, “Waiting Room.” 

The room was rather stark, dingy, and dirty.  There were only a few of us at first, but more people began to trickle in.  We sat on blue plastic chairs that were bolted to benches which were bolted to the floor. Many of the chairs were broken or missing. So many people had to stand. A woman began sweeping the floor with a push broom – it was filthy and she cleaned up piles of dirt and dust.  Then she mopped the floor, while people either raised their legs or stepped out of the way.  A TV screen was in the corner with a numbered list from 1-12. Names appeared next to the numbers as meeting rooms were assigned.  Each time a new person was assigned an electronic buzzer/bell rang.  Steve was actually called first.  I went with him, but was told I needed to wait for my own assignment. About 5 minutes later, my name appeared on the TV… “Sportello 8“ … door 8.

I said, “Buongiorno!” as I sat down in front of the desk. The Policewoman was seated behind a plastic shield with an opening to slide your documents through. She said, “Buongiorno,” back to me. She requested my receipt and my passport. I provided these along with the extra passport photos we had been instructed to bring. She spoke a little English, and I fumbled with my Italian. There were a few times when one or the other of us didn’t understand. I used Google Translate a few times to clarify or ask a question.  She seemed confused as to why my passport only had the EU entry stamp in Amsterdam and no Italian stamp for when we arrived on January 7^th.  I explained that no one reviewed or stamped anything at the airport in Genova. I assume this was because the plane was coming in from Amsterdam which is in the EU as is Italy.  She went to ask her supervisor (I think she may have been new and wasn’t as familiar with some things).  Steve had finished by this time and came over to where I was. He was able to bring up the electronic airline ticket/itinerary and showed it to her. She had also explained that although we had paid the 70.46€ for the one-year visa, if we paid 10€ more we could get the two-year visa.  Of course we wanted to do this. She instructed us to go back to the Poste Italiano and each pay the remainder of the fee and bring back the receipt. Steve had been told to bring it back by 11:15 am.  However, first we had to be finger-printed.  This was a bit confusing because neither of us understood exactly where we were supposed to go for this. Down the hall was another waiting room area with a clerk at the reception desk. She was busy helping other people so we waited about 10-minutes before we could ask her using hand signals to indicated finger printing.  She spoke quickly in Italian (we understood none of what she said) but also pointed down a hall. We went down the hallway.  There they indicated we had to go back out to the waiting room to wait, but they did grab our photos that the Police had stapled to a card and given back to us. We waited. It was around 10 when we began waiting.  It was about 10:30 before Steve was called back for his electronic finger-printing.  I was after him. The whole process took about 10-15 minutes each. They took prints of all four fingers together, then the thumb print, then individual finger prints, and lastly the palm print. Then repeated the process on the other hand. Then we had to wait for someone to approve that the prints were readable. Steve had to go back and repeat some of his prints. By this time it was 5 minutes to 11 am.  We raced to the Poste Italiano, we decided to go to the one where we had initially gotten our application because it was smaller and usually had fewer people waiting.  We got there, got our numbered ticket from the kiosk and waited just a few minutes. We were able to explain through Google translate what we needed and the clerk understood. We paid and got our receipts. We made a hurried dash back to the Questura. It was already 11:25. Steve was able to turn in his receipt almost immediately. I had to wait while the Policewoman I had met with finished up with another individual. I turned in the receipt and got my paper with the number to check status on the electronic system, though we were told it would take about 2 months.

We were hungry, thirsty, and tired, but wanted to celebrate having crossed another threshold. We went to a sushi restaurant we had previously discovered overlooking the Piazza Ferrari. They have a very reasonable “all-you-can-eat” lunch menu for just under 20€/person. We ate our fill and went home to rest!

Ciao for now!!!