Italy visa & residence permit: Albanian Outreachy, Wikimedia & Debian tighten control over woman
At the time of the Debian Bug Squashing Party (BSP) in early 2018, the Albanian woman told me she was learning Italian and she wanted to spend the summer working as a waitress in Italy. Some cousins were already there and she hoped to live closer to them. In subsequent conversations with this woman, she reminded me of her search for employment in Italy to qualify for a residence permit. Even after working there on a temporary permit in the holiday season, she really wanted to find an ongoing job to qualify for residence.
She was controversially given an Outreachy internship with Debian at the end of 2019.
A few weeks after becoming an Outreachy, the woman from Albania was given a job with Wikimedia Italy. This job would appear to qualify her for a permanent residence in Italy.
According to LinkedIn, she started the Wikimedia job shortly after Outreachy. They have employed her as a community manager or program manager, not as a developer.
The woman told us that she was trained to use basic tools like Git during her Debian-funded Outreachy. Did Debian funds pay to train a woman for another organization? Why can't every volunteer use Debian funds to train their girlfriend to use Git?
The woman's Wikimedia profile states that she has been seconded to OpenStreetmap. Her former boyfriend (before Debian) was from OpenStreetmap Belgium.
Is open source a community of professionals or a community of couples?