[Discussion] Citizenship Act (October 2018)

[Amerion]

Ugh, so much to cover haha. I'll have it finished in an hour but the changes Sheep has advocated for conflict with the positions others have (strongly) expressed. I will be creating a poll for each of these conflicts to see where the majority stands.

 

[Amerion]

Spoiler: Current Version - Version 5

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Citizenship Act (October 2018)Proposed by: Amerion ​

Preamble

This act codifies the regulations around the acquisition, maintenance, and removal or loss of citizenship in Lazarus.

Section 1. Residency and the Acquisition of Citizenship

(1) A resident is any person with a nation in Lazarus.

(2) Any resident may apply for citizenship by submitting an application in a designated area of the forum and swearing the following oath:

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From this time forward, I voluntarily without mental reservation or purpose of evasion, pledge my loyalty to Lazarus and her people, whose community ideals I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.​

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Section 2. Maintenance of citizenshipSection 3. Removal of citizenshipSection 4. Appealing a denial of a citizenship application or removal of citizenship

(1) A citizen or the denied applicant may appeal a denial by the Delegate of a citizenship application or removal of citizenship to the Assembly. The Assembly may overturn such decisions by three-quarters vote.

(2) A person may not appeal a denial by the off-site property administration.

Section 5. DefinitionsSection 6. Constitutional law

(1) The Citizenship Act is a constitutional law, and further amendments to it must meet constitutional amendment requirements.

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[Amerion]

To Sheepshape,

I have no issue with many of the suggestions you have provided and have adopted them accordingly. There are, however, a few instances wherein I either tweaked the language a bit or decided to keep the original text rather than amend it. I will list them here.

... I feel similarly about requiring affiliations and identities ...

I have kept the requirement that applicants state their current or previous affiliations/identities to foreign entities, extending no further back than 12 months prior to the application. I did so as I do not believe it is hard for a person to recall where they have been - the time period specified is only asking for twelve months. In any case, it also provides other citizens with a general idea of who is entering the region (I know that I myself have had to look at people's citizenship applications to know more about their background - I did so for you )

Firstly, I'm not actually sure about the Delegate being the one to approve or deny applicants. Not that they don't have a role to play, but the Delegate has a ton of work on their plate and this is pretty easily one that can be farmed out to another official. It could be the Speaker, or a minister created specifically for that role, or we could invent a separate office for appointment/confirmation ("Immigration Specialist" or something like that maybe) - anything to a) take work off the Delegate's busy busy busybusybusybusy hands and b) spread that work, that activity, around to other members of the community. The more people we can get involved and doing things, the better this community will function.

The bill specifies the Delegate as the person with the authority as the Mandate (Section 2 (5)) specifically states that The Delegate may admit residents of Lazarus to citizenship, or may delegate this responsibility to the government official(s) of their choosing.

Given that it allows the Delegate to delegate the responsibility to another official, Section 5 (1) reiterates this point:

With regards to your suggestion of a 'citizenship official' being mandated in this bill and empowering the position with the authority of the Delegate, I understand and support it. I am unsure wherther other people support this and as such, will create a poll to see where people stand on the matter.

Moving on! I'm not enamored with this clause [of the Assembly being able to overturn approvals]. For one thing, it has no end date - hypothetically, the Assembly could decide after years that they don't like someone, and vote to overturn their approval. At minimum, it needs to be time-limited. Something like "The Assembly may initiate an overturn of an approved citizenship within two weeks of its approval."

I have narrowed the time-limit to:

The sub-section was included for the intention of preventing or at least countering voter-importation. It was done so with Funkadelia's actions in the C.U. in mind. Back then, had we had the authority, he would not have been able to do it.

So neither of these clauses is outright objectionable, it's just not really clear what they mean. What are the eligibility requirements of citizenship? Are they the things they had to disclose in the application? Are they activity requirements, which I think we should have? And what does a leave of absence do? Does it exempt them from having to keep a nation alive? Are they allowed to log in and vote while on a leave of absence, or would that force an end to their leave?

I have amended it to go into detail what a LoA entails.

I'm strongly in favor of a small post-count requirement to maintain citizenship. If we don't have that then the citizenship rolls risk being overburdened by an inactive, non-voting, non-participating populace and there's just no benefit to that kind of citizen. It's not that hard to track; it sounds like this forum can actually keep track of people who aren't meeting it, and we can also build that into a spreadsheet that lists citizens without much difficulty at all. I don't see a reason to restrict where they can post; a spam post should count as much as a governmental post, but having nothing at all just... why even bother.

Minimum post-requirements has been a controversial issue. While I amended it to include a requirement, I will include a question on it in a future poll/.

This is the first law where I think I actually support it being a constitutional law; I think the rights of citizenship are important enough to be protected at a higher level than most legislation. But I'm not sure if this really needs to be its own section - can't this just go in the preamble, that it's a constitutional law? And the mandate already defines what that means, so we don't need to say that amendments have to meet constitutional amendment requirements.

Section 6 has been included in the text as a separate section and placed at the end of the bill as it is a rather important piece of information which I hope people, after reading the law in its entirety, will see as the last thing. I think I drew inspiration for its format from how Osiris writes their constitutional laws.

 

[New Rogernomics]

Firstly, I can see a problem more related to court action, and limitation of citizenship rights till it is cleared up/change of masking to 'banned' if the court judges it severe enough:

1. Person X commits/accused of Y crime.
2. Person X has their citizenship limited for length of the trial.

Secondly, I can see a problem in regards to improper OOC conduct:

1. Person X posts vaguely sexually graphic content/engages in harassment/has just been made DOS from NS/viciously trolls someone.
2. Person X has their citizenship limited till a decision is made on their posting privileges for Y time, or till it is passed onto a court (if it also deals heavily with IC actions).

 

[Cormac]

With regards to your suggestion of a 'citizenship official' being mandated in this bill and empowering the position with the authority of the Delegate, I understand and support it. I am unsure wherther other people support this and as such, will create a poll to see where people stand on the matter.

I'm against a mandated citizenship official. If the Delegate wants to appoint one, I'm fine with that because that's authorized by Article II, Section 5 of Mandate 12. But mandating a citizenship official vested with the Delegate's authority when the Delegate may not want such an official would violate Article II, Section 5, and thus would be unconstitutional.

By the way, you have two Section 1(6) in this bill. You'll need to fix that.

I will also note that Section 1(5), Section 1(6)c, and the second provision mistakenly numbered 1(6), are all unconstitutional. Mandate 12 gives the Delegate the power to process citizenship applications. The only other power granted is to forum administration by Article VIII, Section 3 of Mandate 12, which is what makes Section 1(4) of your bill constitutional. Mandate 12 does not give any power to the Vice Delegate or the Council on Lazarene Security in processing citizenship applications. It does not compel the Delegate to abide by a security threat declaration by the CLS. It does not give the Assembly the power to overturn approval of a citizenship application (though that possibility can be mandated for rejection

Minimum post-requirements has been a controversial issue. While I amended it to include a requirement, I will include a question on it in a future poll/.

I am very much against an activity requirement beyond maintaining a nation in the region. An activity requirement would serve no useful purpose. An activity requirement won't generate activity, because if someone loses their citizenship, all they have to do is reapply and, unless they're someone controversial, they're going to be readmitted to citizenship right away. So there is really no consequence to being inactive and losing citizenship, and thus an activity requirement won't do anything to generate activity. All an activity requirement will do is burden the person who has to track compliance with the requirement. On top of that, this is a Sinker, and Sinkers experience periods of low activity. During times of low activity we could see a lot of citizens lose citizenship all at once due to an activity requirement. This happened in Osiris, resulting in repeal of their activity requirement.

Long story short, I see plenty of downsides to an activity requirement, and no benefits.

On another note, I remain concerned with the residence requirement, as I think the waiver threshold is so high that it is unlikely to ever be granted in practice. An additional concern I have is that I think the waiver process violates Article II, Section 5 of Mandate 12 to some degree, because it is taking the Delegate's discretion to admit a citizen and giving that discretion instead to the Assembly, which is only allowed in the case of a citizenship rejection. I'm not as convinced this is unconstitutional as the things I mentioned above, but I'm concerned it might be. My suggestion is to simply allow the Delegate to waive the residence requirement without Assembly approval, but restrict waivers only to cases in which the person is prevented from having a nation. That way we don't get any waivers for lazy people or people we've deliberately banned. The waiver would only be available to someone like Milograd or Mad Jack who can't interact with the game but can still contribute to this community in a non-gameside capacity.

With the exception of the above issues, this is a good bill and I appreciate you taking the time to work on it. I hope we'll be able to continue modifying it so I'll be able to vote for the final version.

 

[Arlo]

Can I say I dislike oaths. They are entirely useless.

 

[New Rogernomics]

I am very much against an activity requirement beyond maintaining a nation in the region. An activity requirement would serve no useful purpose. An activity requirement won't generate activity, because if someone loses their citizenship, all they have to do is reapply and, unless they're someone controversial, they're going to be readmitted to citizenship right away. So there is really no consequence to being inactive and losing citizenship, and thus an activity requirement won't do anything to generate activity. All an activity requirement will do is burden the person who has to track compliance with the requirement. On top of that, this is a Sinker, and Sinkers experience periods of low activity. During times of low activity we could see a lot of citizens lose citizenship all at once due to an activity requirement. This happened in Osiris, resulting in repeal of their activity requirement.

There is an alternative to either option, which is to remove citizenship masks, but not citizenship. If X person goes inactive for 6 months for example, then that account becomes a 'Resident' mask account. However, if they return and post a certain amount, it is automatically re-instated as a Citizenship account after one hour. This is possible through the Group Promotion system, which maintains a full promotion log, without anyone having to put their time into doing anything, as it happens automatically.

 

[Amerion]

I'm against a mandated citizenship official. If the Delegate wants to appoint one, I'm fine with that because that's authorized by Article II, Section 5 of Mandate 12. But mandating a citizenship official vested with the Delegate's authority when the Delegate may not want such an official would violate Article II, Section 5, and thus would be unconstitutional.

On reflection, I agree with you.

A literal reading of that particular sub-section does indeed imbue the Delegate, and only the Delegate, with the authority to delegate that responsibility. It does not belong with the Assembly.

This Assembly could, however, pass a non-binding resolution to that effect; make known our wish for the citizenship authority to rest with a government official, and which the Delegate could act upon.

By the way, you have two Section 1(6) in this bill. You'll need to fix that.

Thanks for pointing that out. I have fixed it in the Word document and will publish it when the polls have concluded.

... Mandate 12 does not give any power to the Vice Delegate or the Council on Lazarene Security in processing citizenship applications ...

Yes, it does not. We could stipulate that while the Vice Delegate may not reject the application outright, the Delegate will be urged to do so, as is stated in the proposed bill in Section 1(6)c; The Delegate must refuse to approve an application if the applicant ... has been declared a security threat by the Vice Delegate or the Council of Lazarene Security ...

 

[Amerion]

Can I say I dislike oaths. They are entirely useless.

I see your point. However, they are present in almost all the regions I am familiar with. I am open to removing it if others feel very strongly about it.

There is an alternative to either option, which is to remove citizenship masks, but not citizenship. If X person goes inactive for 6 months for example, then that account becomes a 'Resident' mask account. However, if they return and post a certain amount, it is automatically re-instated as a Citizenship account after one hour. This is possible through the Group Promotion system, which maintains a full promotion log, without anyone having to put their time into doing anything, as it happens automatically.

This would go a long way to addressing one of Cormac's concerns about how '... an activity requirement will do is burden the person who has to track compliance with the requirement.'

At present, Section 2(1) stipulates a calender-month, but that can be amended to once-a-select-number-of-days. I will see how the poll goes before making a determination on the exact wording.

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[Cormac]

I would be fine with the automated citizenship suspension system New Rogernomics proposes. My primary objection to an activity requirement is that it's useless busywork, and could complicate things if a lot of citizens lose citizenship at once, so if we're automating the process and only suspending citizenship until they post instead of revoking it, that resolves both of my concerns.

 

[Arlo]

Can I say I dislike oaths. They are entirely useless.

I see your point. However, they are present in almost all the regions I am familiar with. I am open to removing it if others feel very strongly about it.

I don't feel particularly strongly about it.

My aversion to them is likely due to me considering oaths as very serious things IRL and therefore finding them a bit inappropriate for an in game community.

 

[Amerion]

Firstly, I can see a problem more related to court action, and limitation of citizenship rights till it is cleared up/change of masking to 'banned' if the court judges it severe enough:

1. Person X commits/accused of Y crime.
2. Person X has their citizenship limited for length of the trial.

Secondly, I can see a problem in regards to improper OOC conduct:

1. Person X posts vaguely sexually graphic content/engages in harassment/has just been made DOS from NS/viciously trolls someone.
2. Person X has their citizenship limited till a decision is made on their posting privileges for Y time, or till it is passed onto a court (if it also deals heavily with IC actions).

 

[Amerion]

I am still very uncomfortable with the prospect of having an indefinite number of citizens.

The possibility that once you receive citizenship, you can sit back and do nothing and still have formal membership in Lazarus two years from now seems illogical and unbeneficial to the region.

Given that the forum allows for an automatic reorganisation of citizens to 'non-citizens' based on their activity count, that is the way I am inclined to move this bill in the direction of. It requires no effort on the part of the Delegate or the Speaker -- so it alleviates the concerns that it creates cumbersome work for these officials -- and honestly, it just makes plain sense.

Inactive nations ceases to exist in NationStates following 28 days of inacitivity. That is the exact standard that shall be applied in this bill.

 

[Arlo]

So people have to post in some silly spam topic every 27 days to keep citizenship? Rules like this do not produce activity. They are just tedious.

 

[Amerion]

As is logging into my nation. But I do it because it is not difficult.

 

[Cormac]

I will vote against this bill if the activity requirement revokes citizenship rather than suspending it. Which is to say, citizenship should automatically be reinstated upon posting again, rather than requiring a new citizenship application. That is, in my view, a decent compromise with those concerned about bloated citizenship rolls.

I would strongly encourage that you take that compromise. A majority of voters were against an activity requirement, and as this is a constitutional law, you'll need 3/4 of votes to pass it. If even just a few others feel as I do, that they won't vote for this bill if the activity requirement results in revocation rather than suspension of citizenship, you're going to have a problem if you keep that provision.

 

[Amerion]

I will take this under advisement.

 

[Amerion]

As discussed with Cormac in Discord, we have been able to reach a compromise between our two positions.

Citizens who do not post on the forum in 28 days will automatically be reorganised into an 'inactive citizens' category. Should an inactive citizen post in the following 28 days, they will be automatically reinstated into the citizens category. However, if they fail to post once in 56 days, they will be removed entirely and reclassified as a member. They will then have to (re)apply for citizenship if they so desire.

I have been informed by New Rogernomics that this is possible on the forum.

It will be written into a new version of the bill, to be published within the day.

 

[Cormac]

Just confirming that I'm good with the above compromise. I hope others will be too!

 

[Arlo]

I still don't see the point but I'm not against it.

Like why move citizens into an inactive citizen category, if they can restore their citizenship automatically just by posting? What does that achieve? I don't really get the overall purpose of the activity requirement -- because the only logical purpose I can think of is to encourage activity, but the reality is that doesn't work, I've never seen it work.