One of the ultimate goals in getting dual citizenship in Italy is to get Italian passports.
However, in order to have an Italian passport you first have a carta d’identita that you use to get the passport. An Italian birth certificate won’t suffice.
What’s a carta d’identita?
This is kind of the equivalent of a driver’s license in the United States, but it doesn’t give me permission to drive in Italy. It’s a card that identifies me. You know, your basic ID card.
So, the next step in the process was to get the identification cards for both my daughter and myself now that we have Italian citizenship.
Getting mine was easy.
To get my daughter’s, however, not as easy.
As we stood there, patiently waiting for the lady to enter all of Kamea’s data into her computer, she started to get frustrated. Then, the hand gestures started as she used them to yell at her computer screen.
Uh-oh, something isn’t right.
Well, shit. Apparently, one of her documents had a comma between her first and middle name and the others do not have a comma between her first and middle name (just a space as usual).
And? Italy wants these to match! Who would’ve guessed that a “comma” could be such a big deal?
Long story short, the computer system does not like the comma.
So we could not proceed. This is less than ideal because we’re trying to get our passports applied for before we move to Puglia in 2.5 weeks.
We’ll wait and see. We don’t have any other choice really. As it stands now, some people higher up the chain of command need to comment on how to handle this “comma” situation.
It’s possible we’ll have to submit for a name change in the Italian system for my daughter to remove the comma before going for the identification card. I’m told the name-changing process could take months in Italy.
All because of a comma.
Oh well, la dolce vita and all.
UPDATE: Good news. We went to the Questura to apply for my passport and inquired about our daughter getting hers, without the carta d’identita. Well, guess what? He said, “Certo.” (Sure.) Seems (maybe because she’s a minor?) that we can proceed with hers, as planned for December, before we leave for Puglia, after all! I’m not entirely surprised. Oftentimes in Italy, it’s just a matter of who you talk with.