# American moving to Italy!



## rho522

Hello All,
I am a 38 year old American music teacher with 14 years of classroom teaching experience planning (hoping!) to move to Italy by May/June 2011. I am currently discouraged by all that I read concerning getting a work visa and non-EU citizens finding jobs . I will live anywhere I can secure a job and an apartment, but the visa requirements seem complicated and potentially full of obstacles. Is there an American citizen on this site who has recently been through this experience? Any advice/tips? Is it smart to go there without a job and hope to find one? How improtant is it to have everything concerning job and accommodations in place before the move? I am determined to make this work, but need to be secure in my financial standing once I'm there! Thank you for any words of wisdom!!


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## Joppa

rho522 said:


> Hello All,
> I am a 38 year old American music teacher with 14 years of classroom teaching experience planning (hoping!) to move to Italy by May/June 2011. I am currently discouraged by all that I read concerning getting a work visa and non-EU citizens finding jobs . I will live anywhere I can secure a job and an apartment, but the visa requirements seem complicated and potentially full of obstacles. Is there an American citizen on this site who has recently been through this experience? Any advice/tips? Is it smart to go there without a job and hope to find one? How improtant is it to have everything concerning job and accommodations in place before the move? I am determined to make this work, but need to be secure in my financial standing once I'm there! Thank you for any words of wisdom!!


The thing is, as an non-EU citizen you must have a work visa to live and work in Italy, and one is only issued if you are fixed up with a job, which means being sponsored by an Italian employer for your visa. The difficulty, as you may have found out, is that a visa is only issued if your sponsor can convince the authorities that the job can only be filled by you, and they couldn't get any suitable applicants from within Italy or in EU. 
There is nothing to stop you going to Italy (you are allowed up to 90 days) to look around and check out work opportunities, but even if you find an employer willing to sponsor you (which is doubtful for reasons given), you must return home and apply for your visa in US. There is high unemployment in Italy, and the government is doing their best to preserve jobs for Italian and EU workers, and will only agree to issue a visa to a non-EU citizen if it's in their interest to do so. I'm not belittling your accomplishment as a musician or music teacher, but if you were a world-renowned soloist and decided to relocate to Italy, they would consider it an honour (and you would be spending your considerable wealth there) and I'd imagine a visa would be forthcoming without much difficulty. What I'm trying to say is that unless you have a right to live in Italy, such as being an EU citizen or being married to one, unless it's in their interest, a working visa would be near the bottom of their priority, as they have many more people they are obliged to help.
Sorry for being rather negative, but I'm just being realistic and putting forward the facts as they are. One thing you can try is to be employed as a music teacher in one of US forces schools in Italy, though their numbers are declining following the end of the cold war and changes in US foreign policy.


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## latfla

What about giving tutoring in music, ESOL, and related areas you are experienced in? Am taking my teaching certs, just in case...in case ...


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## Arturo.c

With unemployment at record levels, it's highly unlikely for every non-EU citizen who wishes to live and work in Italy to find an employer willing to sponsor him/her for a visa (let alone hire him/her), unless he/she is a very skilled specialist or has his own niche of expertise.

Unless you can prove your Italian (or other EU member state) ancestry and get a second passport, I don't see many opportunities looming ahead...


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## tmandarano

This one was really revived from the graveyard.


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