Re: I lived in St. Quentin-en-Yvelines (near Versailles) for 2.5 years in the early 80's. I had been brought over on a work contract - my car, an Alfa Romeo (US version) was shipped over for me. Well, to register it there, first I had to have it inspected and the guy nearly decided that I would have to REMOVE the side marker lamp that turn on with the parking lights. After all, this safety feature could be DANGEROUS!
So, you still have sweaty nightmares about French bureaucracy and red tape, huh? But heck, you were lucky you didn't get a job assignment in Italy --France's cousin....
Next time you complain about the US "big-government" trampling on your cherished civil liberties just recall the article below.... Oh, before I forget, note that it describes Italy's security frenzy "ante-911" so to speak --just imagine what would happen in Europe AFTER a 911-like terrorist outrage hit it....
Black hands and cold shoulders
Sophie Arie in Rome
Saturday February 22, 2003
The Guardian
I was warned about the bureaucracy. I knew there would be queues. But nobody told me about the surgical gloves.
So when I pushed the door of the "foreigners' office" at my local questura - police station - to offer up multiple documenti to complete a request for a resident's permit, I found myself face to face not with a pen-pushing policeman in uniform but a grinning man in a white coat stretching and snapping on a skin-like pair of plastic gloves, finger by finger.
I wondered for a moment if I was about to experience my first "thorough" body search in that dusty office, between two plastic desks piled high with heaps of yellowing paperwork.
"Leave it all to me. I've got the technique," said the man in white coat. I was asked politely to take off my coat and roll up my sleeves. And revealing an ink pad and roller, the policeman proceeded to coat my hands in ink and meticulously stamp my fingers and palms on multiple filing cards.
His task completed, I was prodded down a corridor, blackened hands held out, in the direction of the toilets.
"Most of it comes off," an equally baffled American student assured me as he emerged, hands dripping.
Under Italian law foreigners living in Italy are meant to apply for a residence permit, providing proof that they have a job or some other legitimate reason to stay. And for several months, since new, stricter immigration regulations were introduced, fingerprinting has become part of the process.
The triumph of bureaucracy over time: what was already a painstakingly long paper-pushing process has suddenly become half an hour longer (and a whole lot messier) per person.
"You think this is bad," said the white-coated policeman. "Later this year we are going to fingerprint all the Italians, too."
The mind boggles. All 57 million Italians. All filing down to their local police station to have their fingerprints taken. Have they thought of the soap bill?
Both procedures are, of course, part of Italy's answer to September 11.
Plans are under way for a new fingerprint identity card for Italians, and foreigners are under increased pressure to "regularise" themselves or get out.
Under a law introduced last September an amnesty was declared under which all immigrants must register themselves and show proof of employment or face expulsion.
Employers now have to find a house for anyone they employ from abroad and guarantee to cover the cost of the return journey.
Lose your job and you get six months now, rather than a year, to find a new one or get out.
If you are caught without the right papers, you can be detained in a "centre of temporary stay for migrants" for up to 60 days, unless you leave the country immediately.
The result is a wave of job losses in the immigrant community as employers shake off the responsibility. And a thriving black market for fake job contracts, at EUR500 (£340) a time.
The new immigration laws were drawn up last year by the far-right deputy prime minister, Gianfranco Fini, and the Northern League leader, Umberto Bossi.
In January two members of Mr Bossi's Northern League urged that the law be applied particularly on trains used by immigrati extracomunitari (those from outside the EU) in northern Italy.
Immigrants who "camp and sleep on seats, taking off their shoes and boots", they said, should be made to travel in special carriages, separately from Italian citizens.
guardian.co.uk
Trent Lott should take on Italian politics, eh? |
