[Discussion] Citizenship Act (October 2018)

[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 of a citizenship application).

One could argue that the wording of Article II, Section 5 -- "Further procedure for citizenship admission . . . may be established by law." -- gives broad power to establish additional procedures like the ones to which I've objected. I don't at all agree with that expansive reading of the "further procedure" clause. The "further procedure" clause is restrained by the clause preceding it, which gives the Delegate the power to admit citizens. So when Mandate 12 says further procedure may be established by law, it's taken for granted that any further procedure must be compliant with the requirements already established by Mandate 12. The "further procedure" clause was intended to allow some of the other things you've done in this bill, like establishing eligibility requirements. It was not intended to allow any other institution of government to usurp any of the Delegate's power to admit citizens. That power is granted by Mandate 12, and with the exception of forum administration's role in masking and an appeal process for rejection of a citizenship application, the Delegate's power in this regard is meant to be absolute.
 

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.