Italy rated one of the hardest countries for foreigners to settle in
thelocal.it
thelocal.it
In order to actually sit down for this test (which it only takes 20 minutes in front of the computer) you need to first make an appointment, then go to the motor vehicle department and THEN there make the real appointment for the test. For the first appointment there can be 1 or 2 months wait. To sit down in the computer 2 or 3 months.
No one ever will answer the telephone, as a matter of fact all the contacts in the official website are incorrect (the mail address does not exist and the phone number is actually missing a digit). If you show up at the department, no one would actually talk to you if you do not have an appointment, even if the office is empty. If you actually manage to talk to someone they will say that they can't do anything, that everything is with appointment from the website and refuse to help you, they might even treat you rudely as if you were the cause of the problem.
To make any appointment, you need to log in in a crappy site and manually click each day in the calendar until you get lucky and find a day that is free for selection. So if from today two months in time there is an empty slot, you need to click 60 times the calendar.
If you have read "The Trial" by Kafka, this is 100 times worst.
One last thing that goes beyond comprehension. If you come from Argentina (like I do) and you have a valid driver's licence you can get the Italian one by some paperwork only before you get residency but not AFTER. If you want the licence after getting residency, you need to go through this hell.
Also was thinking of getting a motorcycle license in the US so I can use it there for a while (since the moto license school is $1200usd vs 250 for a class in the us).
Maybe it helps you, and I don't know if that's the case for Italy, but here in Romania there are a couple of websites to which you can temporarily subscribe ("temporarily" meaning 7 to 10 days, can't remember exactly) and then you can train yourself on those test questions like you're during the exam itself. After 3 or 4 days of going through those tests again and again you're pretty much guaranteed to pass the police test itself, even if you haven't read the actual road legislation.
As for the bureaucracy I cannot offer any good advice, but maybe there are also some companies who can help you with that? (after paying them, of course).
It should be as simple as go to for 3 or 4hs rule driving course by the government (or authorized government authority), then sign a document declaring that you have assisted the course and you are aware of driving rules and allow you to do supervised driving before taking the driving exam.
Every single time I'm walking on the streets I particularly pay attention to car drivers when going to the supermarket. Do you know what a lot of people are doing? Looking at mobile phone screens.
Given the fact that statistically almost everyone has a mobile phone I'm inclined to think that distraction due to mobile screen can be as dangerous (or even more) as being drunk while driving. This is also why I believe that displays in cars should be completely banned and driving instruments should be old school.
Hola Lucas, unless something changed recently (or maybe motorizzazione of your city has different rules - I don't think so) this part is not correct. You can convert your license after having your residency, I'd be surprised of the opposite to be honest.
I know because I did it 2 years ago. The only requisite is that your argentinian license has not expired.
Feel free to reach out if you need.
Yes, I forgot to mention that little detail. Mine is expired :-( which I'm regretting so much (Gracias por la sugerencia Ramiro, seguro que a alguien que este en situacion similar a la mia le sirve de ayuda!).
If you own a car in Italy, you have to locate the nearest autoscuola/ufficio pratiche auto (literally "car bureaucracy office") and get in friendly terms with them. They do all sort of car-related stuff for relatively small fees (the only one I remember is the 1€ fee for paying the car tax).
Edit: some corrections.
They can handle just the bureaucracy for a small fee. Some of them refuse to do so, but they totally can.
Public departments don't talk each other so people must transfer data theirself by hand. IT ignorance is a thing: happened to me, courthouse asked paper copy of a document when I provided a signed electronic one I got from Internal Affairs Ministry website because, as far as they told me, they didn't know how to verify its legitimacy.
My former wife stayed at home when pregnant becase of illness caused by pregnancy, but due to complex laws no one knew if it was plain sickness or early motherhood period (they have very different consequences for the job after child birth), but we had to file a request stating the reason to stay at home. Public office people just told us "try something and let's see".
I could go on forever...
This is going to be very hard to explain, but basically imagine when you read something written by a Chinese newspaper about your country, it's just off, like focusing on the wrong issue that isin't really seem as a problem, or interviewing people that aren't really important.
Like this one: https://www.thelocal.dk/20230324/why-are-waste-containers-ov... if you read the Danish sources, it is about work hours yes, but it is really about avoiding traffic in the city at later stages of the day (I picked an article at random)
> Are there better English language equivalents you know of?
with today's AI, I think translating is doing a great job tbh
And it's even worse if you go to a smaller town wanting to retire
(Naturally you'll have fewer problems if you know someone who knows someone etc...)
I suspect this is valid in Italy too.
I experienced this first hand when my one of my brother's citizenship documents issued by the Italian consulate was sent to the Udine comune with a wrong/missing electronic signature. We had to call and talk to them, they explicitly told us to talk again with the Italian consulate in Argentina to get things fixed. For about two weeks we were talking to both parties until we fixed the problem in a completely different way. Unbelievable.
However something wonderful happened when one of the comune we were dealing with in Italy attempted to frustrate the actions of the consulate bureaucrat. The London official, who had previously been our nemesis, suddenly flipped allegiance, and we were transported effortlessly towards our goal, surfing on a tide of paper-pushing vengeance as she sought to stamp her authority over her counterparts in the provinces.
Here is the actual survey: https://www.internations.org/expat-insider/2022/expat-essent...
"Germany (52nd) does very badly in the Digital Life (48th), Housing (47th), and Language (49th) Subcategories. Expats are unhappy with the ease of getting high-speed internet access at home (24% vs. 11% globally) and the lack of cashless payment options (27% vs. 8% globally). Moreover, housing is both hard to afford (59% unhappy vs. 43% globally) and to find (56% unhappy vs. 27% globally). “It may take up to three months to find even a temporary accommodation,” says an expat from Poland. And everyday life is anything but easy if you don’t speak the language (46% unhappy vs. 32% globally)."
Also, it's hard to complain that the difficultly for getting DeutscheKabel, DT, or 1&1 off their rear ins is a mark against the country.
And like every expat, I had to at a given point having friends as "hostage" on the restaurant while hunting for an ATM, or been the "hostage" for others not yet used to the culture. Naturally we could have paid the bill and settled it later, but that is yet another matter regarding on the how to pay culture.
It’s been getting a lot better with Covid and SumUp, though.
And that's one of the things I love your country for. It's the acceptance of personal consensual relationships/hedonism, and respect for the privacy/wellbeing. It's rather unfortunate at how you arrived at the understanding of that need.
and brains, brains with hands, are _the_ #1 ressource of an industrialized high tech nation.
too bad immigration offices are understaffed, and foreigner-FUD is omnipresent outside big cities. and too bad some lobbies convinced rural areas that fibre optics and cell phone radiation are bad for them. I really can't be but sarcastic. sorry for the rant.
It's a different Germany. Scholz just can't remember, because his brain resets after each crime. And it's not just Scholz, it's wherever you look when the curtain is drawn back. Remember RBB?
It is like this in the public, and in the semi-public as well. Once the wage comes in, interest dies.
For the same reason, firing a public employee who is under performing is almost impossible. We just move them around.
For example, is Saudi Arabia still in the TOP 10 countries if I’m gay, a woman or trans?
Sure, if you aren't in these groups you have the luxury of completely freaking ignoring it.
I'm bisexual all the time. Transfolks are trans all the time. All queer folks are queer all the time even if you can't tell they are queer. So yes, everything is about it as much as you are always gonna be whatever nationality you are (even if you aren't legally a citizen), you'll always have your basic skin color, and so on.
You gotta be kidding, the Western world has immense support for queer people, especially recently.
We let queer folks die of aids in the 80s, though. I'm in my 40s, I remember that.
Folks stopped talking to me my 8th grade year because I "was lesbian". The next 2 years, people would go up to my friends and ask why they were even friends with me. "She's a lesbian, you know..." My school didn't let folks go to proms with a queer lover: Someone I knew got suspended for wearing a kilt-like skirt, and I know that at least a few admin didn't like hiring gay teachers because they thought they made kids gay. I graduated high school in 96, by the way.
When I started working, I could be fired for being queer. The military still had the Don't Ask, Don't tell, which basically meant that being queer was OK as long as you didn't act queer, say anything queer, or have a queer relationship.
In the 2000s, it became trendy to be bisexual. If you were female, that is. My sexuality was a fashion accessory. I was told I did it to attract men. Yay.
Queer folks couldn't marry someone of the same sex until after I moved out of the US. This is in the last 10 years.
Today, the most ill-supported group are transfolks. There definitely isn't support for all queer folks - have you seen the legislation?
Western countries aren't supportive enough to speak out against anti-queer groups or countries that would sentence folks like me to death in some cases.
Is it better than in the recent past? Sure, sometimes. But folks have died for that and still are.
A lot of it is tokenism and PR. Don't get me wrong, I know there are tons of people out there who support queer people! It's just that there's also tons of people who don't, which makes me sad.
I don't entirely agree with this wholly utilitarian approach, but if we're just talking about stupid and pointless rankings, as opposed to judicial philosophy, I don't know, seems fine for a general audience and people who aren't a general audience should seek publications and rankings that are more targeting towards their specific circumstances.
For instance, I don't have kids. If I read a list about 10 awesome things to do at Disney world I wouldn't grumble that it's all about family activities and wonder why there isn't more in there for singles. I'd look elsewhere than the inflight magazine for what single people should do at Disneyworld.
Let's circle back to the context of the article, which is about how easy it is for a foreigner to settle in a foreign country. The article doesn't specify who is this foreigner, and so the only reasonable approach is to assume it must apply to every single human being.
Of course! This is such a strange point to make in my opinion, I assure you even though you are a bisexual you are ignoring all kinds of things that don't affect you directly as you are only human. :)
It is a big complicated world filled with problems, everything can't possibly be equally urgent in equal proportions to every single person. If anything it is a good way to drive yourself into a depression and in-action, what good is impotent emoting really?
To get there is not easy and instead of driving oneself into depression, one could also proactively attempt to improve their community for everyone. e.g. The author of the article, could have included a more inclusive perspective. It would have made for a better article - imagine the plot-twist: sometimes, as a foreigner, it may be easier to move into a country with a little bit more bureaucracy in exchange for a more stable and happier life.
Sure. I'm just saying attempt effectively. And don't forget everyone is not everyone you like/agree with.
> The author of the article, could have included a more inclusive preselective
Eh? You want the article to better reflect that bisexsual dudes might want to think twice about moving to Saudi Arabia? One would assume that is common knowledge or at least the responsibility of the reader to further research. By the same token, some of the readers are conservative muslims. How does one simultaneously editorialize the article to be more inclusive/cater to them?
I hope my point is clear. I don't believe a more inclusive preselective is logically possible in every situation, the broader the subject the less chance you have of pleasing every possible reader.
Consider not spending your inclusivity tokens on every single thing you encounter simply because you'll run out. Spend wisely. :)
P.S. - Please don't shoot the messenger.
More common for whom? This is an example of the kind of bias I'm trying to point to. They're not mutually exclusive, and so neither is more important than the other. That's why we call them generally "civil liberties".
In some of the TOP 10 countries, having the wrong religion (or none) can be just as life-threatening as being gay. And in others, good luck even walking outside to sort out your papers if you're a woman without an escort or a trans person.
I would recommend foreigners to move to Italy only if Italy is very strong in their field of interest, for example in fashion, food, wine, art o the opera.
Kenya in top 10 figures though - friends were there for a couple years and absolutely loved it (only left because work required it)
I recently moved to the UAE, and Dubai is considered more foreigner friendly than the capital, Abu Dhabi.
I agree with your general point, but I think it’s more about finding large cities that are likely to have an expat community.
I'd assume big heterogenous centres in general are easier, being a capital happens to be a correlation.
I think one of the most important things to keep in mind, if you want to move to Italy, is that Italy is a diverse country. There are places which are very open-minded and welcoming and places where people don't want even other Italians to move in, let alone strangers. Doing some research before moving will help a lot.
Also getting permissions for building a house was fast (59 days, germany sometimes months).
But yes there is one hard thing: As Non-Schengen-Member you have to speak the language. That is a big barrier for many people. Germany doesn't care and even pays for language courses. As a founder in germany myself, that makes things so much easier. Hiring new people from all over the world, was no issue at all (beside that the foreigner office often does not speak english).
There is another thing, maybe some italians here know that: I'm in north italy, is there maybe a big difference to south italy?
Edit: accidentally linked to cities list instead of countries