I’m worried that at the consulate interview they might ask: “This isn’t the only association — why didn’t you join the others?” Some people say that such a question is sometimes asked, others say it’s not. Has anyone who recently had an interview been asked this?
I also have problems with associations, probably like most people outside IT. I wouldn’t say right off the bat that I have nothing to show, because I was personally refused membership in one association simply because I’m not in the required country. In an interview you can explain that — they rejected me, not that I didn’t try to join.
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Thanks, Tanya, that calmed me down a bit. So at the interview it’s okay to say that I tried to join but wasn’t accepted somewhere for formal reasons — the important thing is not to be silent and pretend I never tried, right?
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They rejected me from AIAP — I work in visual communication, and they don’t really take people without an Italian diploma. I was accepted into the Swiss one, but I don’t really know how that’s viewed in interviews — it’s not Italian, after all. So I have the same picture you described: I have one, but I wasn’t accepted into the other for formal reasons. I think that’s better than nothing, because it shows the process was underway and that I wasn’t just sitting idly.
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Regarding the Swiss one — if an association isn’t on the consulate’s standard list, there’s a risk the consulate will check the list and not find it, so for them it’s just a piece of paper. How big that risk actually is I don’t know; I haven’t collected statistics. I joined the IWA myself — at least with that one it’s clear it appears on the lists the consulate recognizes.
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I joined AIAP, then found out that, by law, it’s important not just to have membership but that the association actually confirms the qualification — not all associations do this the same way. At our Cyprus interview the consulate checked this; they asked me to explain the admission criteria for each of the associations that were in the package.
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The refusal from AIP came with exactly that wording — they don’t accept non‑EU citizens without a residence permit and registration in Italy; it’s a directive, not just their whim. You can attach such a document — it shows you applied and why they refused, and it’s explainable at the interview: as soon as I get the residence permit, there’ll be no obstacle. I think this is more convincing than simply saying “I tried.”
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After AIP rejected me, I tried AEIT and AICA — both their websites are completely down, with or without a VPN. So the question of other IT associations sometimes boils down to the fact that they’re physically impossible to access in working order. Right now the helper is butting heads with the programmers’ union — it’s a different route there, not membership as such but qualification verification through them. We’ll see how the consulate takes it.
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I also got a rejection from AIP — but my reason is different from the EU case: they wrote that the address on the application isn’t Italian. So it’s a formal barrier, not a substantive one — once an Italian address appears, it can be resubmitted. And that brings us back to the question about the list on dati.mise.gov.it — if the consulate is checking specifically there, the Swiss one isn’t listed, and then the issue won’t be about the number of associations but about whether what’s in the package is counted at all.
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I only got the IWA on the second try — the first attempt failed because of the address; I had given a non-Italian one. As soon as I changed it to the Italian address from the hotel booking, everything was accepted right away. A year ago I was also refused at AIP — that was for a different reason: non-EU citizenship. So in the end I have one working association, and I plan to explain at the interview exactly like that: I tried, there were concrete formal barriers, it wasn’t that I simply didn’t try.
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