Residence permits after arrival

The visa opens the border, and the residence permit, the permesso di soggiorno, makes the stay legal. It is requested within eight working days of the entry, from the Questura of the province through the postal kit for most of the permits and at the Questura itself for the others, it carries the fingerprints and the photograph of the holder, it is renewed before it expires, and it is the document which every office in Italy, from the comune to the bank, asks to see before it acts.

The application

The kit is collected at a post office, filled in with the form, the copy of the passport and of the visa, the documents of the reason of the stay and the stamp duty of sixteen euro, and handed in at a post office which issues the receipt with the codes for the tracking and the date of the appointment at the Questura, where the fingerprints are taken. The costs are the thirty euro of the postal service, the thirty euro and forty-six cents of the production of the electronic card, and a contribution of forty euro for a permit of up to one year, fifty for a permit of up to two years and one hundred for the long-term permit and for the permits of managers and specialists, with the minors, the duplicates, the updates and the conversions paying the production cost alone and the family members of EU citizens nothing. The kit serves the permits for work, for family, for study and research, for religious reasons, for elective residence and for the renewals, while the permits for asylum, for medical treatment and the first permits of some other kinds are requested at the Questura, and the permits which follow a nulla osta are requested at the Sportello Unico of the Prefecture with the contract of stay.

The receipt, the renewal and the time

The receipt of the post office, with the visa or the expired permit, allows the holder to live and work in Italy while the permit is produced, and to travel to the country of origin and back directly, not through other States of the Schengen area. The renewal is requested at least sixty days before the expiry, with the same kit and the proof that the conditions remain, and the time of the Questura varies from a few weeks to several months according to the province. A permit which has expired for more than sixty days without a renewal is lost, and a worker who loses the job keeps a permit to seek another for at least twelve months.

The long-term EU permit

After five years of legal residence with valid permits, a foreigner with an income not lower than the social allowance, a suitable housing and a certificate of Italian at level A2 obtains the EU permit for long-term residents, which is not subject to a term, carries a card of ten years renewed on request, allows work in any form and gives the right to move to another member State. Absences of more than six consecutive months, or of ten months in all, interrupt the five years. The permit for study counts for half, and the refugees count from the application for asylum.

The permits which count for citizenship

The years which article 9 of the citizenship law requires for the naturalisation are years of legal residence: registration in the population register of a comune, with a valid permit, without interruption. Every permit counts, provided the registration exists and the permit was valid throughout, and a gap in either starts the count again. The permit pending citizenship, provided for by the regulation of 1999, is issued only to a person who has applied to a comune for the recognition of the citizenship by descent, lasts one year, is renewed until the decision, and does not allow work in the practice of most Questure, which is why a descendant who intends to live in Italy while the application is examined weighs it against the permits for work or for elective residence. The page on applying in Italy describes the route.

If you are about to arrive in Italy, or your permit is about to expire, send us the visa, the documents of your reason of stay and your address. We tell you which permit to request, where and with which papers, and we prepare the file and the translations.