[AMENDMENT] Citizenship Act

By apparent necessity, I’ve taken on the role of approving citizenship applications / enforcing lapses in status / maintaining citizenship records. Aside from having to extensively repair and combine records, I’ve found this to be a needlessly onerous and poorly-followed procedure, both by citizenship officials and by numerous citizens making changes to resident / WA nation status.

Right now, the onus is heavily on the Office to monitor and accommodate individuals playing fast and loose with their residency and WA status. People are changing their nations and not announcing it, changing their nations and not sending telegrams as required by the statute, CTE’ing and refounding, raiding with foreign organizations & not announcing these changes in WA status, and the Office seems expected to offer leniency, chaperone people and chase them down when they’re in violation, and is obligated to grant a 48-hour grace period while people fool around at our expense. While I could choose austerity and have the legal authority right now to purge multiple citizens who have not followed the law in regards to updating the Office in the Thread and telegramming an Official, I’d prefer to amend the law, change things and put a stop to all this in the future. This is ridiculous and I don’t have time for it, and it puts strain on people and resources that could be better focused elsewhere.

For those who don’t know exactly what I’m talking about, please observe all updates to the records thread beginning here.

Also eliminating the dispatch option for recordkeeping. This is what the forum is for. Things go poorly when dispatches are used for government business like this. Same for proscription.

SECTION I: CITATION

…1.1. This Act shall be known and cited as the “Citizenship Act.”

SECTION II: ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CITIZENSHIP OFFICE AND THE APPLICATION THREAD

…2.1. The Citizenship Office (“Office”) is hereby established to oversee the process of naturalization. It shall be composed of the Viziers, the Eastern Pacific Police Service Commissioner, and other Citizenship Officials as confirmed by the Magisterium. The Delegate cannot serve concurrently as a Commissioner.

…2.2. The Grand Vizier shall lead and set out the procedures of the Office.

…2.3. The Magisterium shall confirm Citizenship Officials nominated by the Grand Vizier via a 2/3 majority vote for an indefinite term. The Magisterium may remove Citizenship Officials by the same majority.

…2.4. The Office shall establish an official forum thread (“Thread”) that can be utilized for official records, inquiries, the posting of applications, acceptance or denial of applications, acceptance of requests, and other purposes as seen proper by the Office or this law.

SECTION III: NATURALIZATION

…3.1. Residents seeking to become Citizens must (as listed alphabetically):
…3.1.1. State within their application one of their valid Resident nations and their World Assembly (“WA”) nation, and post said application in the medium designated by the Office,
…3.1.2. Respond in confirmation to a telegram sent to both their nations from a Citizenship Official, and
…3.1.3. Have their application accepted by the Office.

…3.2. All applications must list a valid WA nation and all nations listed in an application must be operated by their respective applicants. Applications not meeting these criteria shall be denied.

…3.3. A Citizenship Official shall notify a Resident, via an in-game telegram, on whether their application for Citizenship was accepted or denied.

…3.4. The Office may deny any Citizenship application for reasons of regional security concerns, incomplete application, provision of falsified information and/or ejection from the WA. Said denial may be appealed to the Conclave within two weeks of denial.
…3.4.1. The Praesidium may vote to overrule the Office’s decision to grant Citizenship for reasons of regional security.
…3.4.2. If a telegram from the Citizenship Office is not replied to within fourteen days, the associated citizenship application shall automatically expire, in which case a new citizenship application must be submitted in order to be accepted.

…3.5. Upon becoming a Citizen, a Resident is required to maintain continuous residency with the Resident nation they stated their application (“recorded Resident nation”). They shall also, maintain continuous WA membership with the nation they stated as their WA nation in their application (“recorded WA nation”).

…3.6. In the event a Citizen wishes to change what nation the Office has noted as their recorded Resident nation or recorded WA nation, they shall request the Office , within the designated Thread, to change one of their recorded nations to a new nation they own. A telegram from the new nation shall be sent to a Citizenship Official.
…3.6.1. A Citizen does not need to send such a telegram if their new nation is their current recorded Resident nation or recorded WA nation.
…3.6.2. A Citizenship Official shall notify a Citizen, via an in-game telegram, once their request for a change is granted by the Office in the Thread.

…3.7. Continuous World Assembly membership requirements shall not apply to any active soldier of the Eastern Pacific Sovereign Army (“EPSA”) as verified by the Overseeing Officer. The active EPSA soldier must notify the Citizenship office within one week of joining EPSA.
…3.7.1. If an EPSA soldier ceases active duty, they have one week within which to declare a World Assembly nation they own to the Office in the designated medium to serve as their recorded WA nation following said declaration. Failure to do so in said time-frame shall invalidate their Citizenship.

…3.8 The Overseeing Officer is mandated to upkeep an updated list of EPSA soldiers for the Citizenship Office to review. If the Overseeing Officer does not keep an updated list, they shall be in dereliction of duty.

SECTION IV: CITIZENSHIP AUDIT

…4.1. A Citizenship shall be immediately invalid 48 hours after they are publicly notified in the Thread by the Office to either (as listed alphabetically) upon discovery by the Office of:
…4.1.1. No longer Failure to maintain residency with their recorded Resident nation at the time of notification,
…4.1.2. No longer Failure to maintain WA membership in their recorded WA nation at the time of notification.
…4.1.3. Failure to comply with the process detailed in Section 3.6.

…4.2. If the Citizen returns their recorded Resident nation to the region or their WA membership to their recorded WA nation and issues a notification of such return within the Thread before the 48 hour period established in Section 4.1 expires, their Citizenship shall remain valid.
…4.2.1 The Citizen may also keep their Citizenship valid if they successfully change their recorded Resident nation or recorded WA nation to another nation with valid citizenship or WA membership within the same 48 hour period, following Section 3 procedures.

…4.32. Exceptions to Section 4.1 and its subsections may be established by additional law. Any Citizen may reapply for Citizenship upon removal.

…4.43. Any Resident may renounce their Citizenship by notifying the Office in the Thread.

SECTION V: CITIZENSHIP RECORDS

…5.1. The Office shall maintain an official list of all Citizens. Said list shall remain publicly viewable on The East Pacific forums or in an in-game dispatch. The list may be posted in another forum thread besides the Thread if the forums are utilized for this purpose.

…5.2. Approval or denial of a Citizenship application or change of a Citizen’s nations shall be the moment when the Office states within the Thread that an application has been denied or accepted or that a change of nation was accepted.

…5.3. Removal of Citizenship shall be the moment when the Office marks, within the Thread, that a Citizen’s Citizenship is invalid or a Citizen has renounced their registration.

SECTION VI: PROSCRIPTION

…6.1. Proscription shall be a status which confers banishment from the region for reasons of regional security based on actions committed abroad or against The East Pacific. No proscription may be issued against any resident for reason of summary or indictable offense; all such instances must be tried by Conclave.

…6.2. Individuals with no known resident nation may be proscribed by the Praesidium through any process dictated by the Standing Orders of the Praesidium.

…6.3. Non-citizen residents may be proscribed by the Praesidium through a 3/4 majority vote, the administration of which shall be defined by the Standing Orders of the Praesidium.

…6.4. No Citizen may be proscribed by the Praesidium.

…6.5. The Grand Vizier shall maintain a public record of proscribed groups and nations on the forums or in a dispatch, as well as the reasons behind proscription…

…6.6. The Delegate must be informed upon the beginning of a proscription process, as well as once a decision is made. The Grand Vizier must announce each proscription, or consign such a task to the Delegate. This announcement must adequately justify the proscription.

…6.7. The maintenance of a resident nation by an individual proscribed by the Praesidium shall be considered a summary offense with a sentence of banishment for as long as the proscription lasts.

…6.8. The Praesidium may alter or lift any proscription by the process in which it was established, or establish a time limit or terms within the initial proscription decision.

…6.9. Any proscribed nation may appeal to the Conclave, in which the length or terms of proscription may be altered, including an exception to group proscriptions, or the proscription may be fully lifted, if it is determined to be unreasonable or unjustified.

SECTION VII: VOTE FRAUD

…8.1. Nothing in this Act permits an individual to maintain multiple Citizenships, which shall constitute an indictable offense with a maximum sentence of permanent banishment.

…8.2. Any individual who attempts to vote during Delegate Elections and regional referenda without valid Citizenship shall be committing an indictable offense with a maximum sentence of one year banishment.

While I could choose austerity and have the legal authority right now to purge multiple citizens who have not followed the law in regards to updating the Office in the Thread and telegramming an Official…

Who’s to say you shouldn’t?

Full support. I’m sick of the bullshit.

Despite me being in LOA, I’m still gonna comment

I don’t like this. What it’s doing is removing a period of grace for people who may have forgotten, like “hey, just so you know” and replacing it with “boom, you’re off the list”.

I would like some reasoning behind the removal of IV.2 (admittedly, I did skim through the initial explanation, so just quoting will be fine).

They can just reapply. Putting all of this work on the Cit Office is unreasonable. 4.2 just doubles the checks that Cit Office has to do within 48 hours, and I don’t always have time to work within 48 hours like this. And it seems like no one else is willing to do this right now if I don’t handle it.

The vast majority of citizens aren’t delinquent when it comes to reporting, but the few who consistently are are making a lot of work and a lot of possible problems - potentially even frivolous legal challenges - for people who are actually willing to put the time and effort into making this place function on a basic, fundamental level. Please let me just nix citizenship when our process is not respected; people can reapply later with updated credentials, although I may eventually recommend repeat offenders to the Praesidium for denial.

I would say the problem here is that citizen office needs to be expanded, for example assigning more Viziers to the task. We have double digit viziers, and if they aren’t doing work, you all need to sit down and have a good talk to split work. Handling everything by yourself is not healthy.

The first time cit official checks - say 20 citizens, and then finds 3 in noncompliance, the second time after the notification should just be zero-ing on those 3 which another official can do.

Full support. Grace periods have been argued for a lot in the past, but I don’t see the need for it. I can’t think of a single reason why someone would need the time. So far, the only people who I have (in my long tenure being the sole active citizenship officer until I burnt out) notified that needed to correct are:

  1. People who corrected but then continued to not use voting rights anyway (the only thing citizenship confers, since residents are protected by the Concordat)
  2. People who just don’t notice/correct anyway
  3. One singular person who did notice and then refused to correct out of spite and then also tried to sue me

Our grace period is currently not bringing any positive community benefit. It’s extra red tape, extra burden on an understaffed, overworked, underappreciated, over-relied-upon office. Which brings me to this:

Yeah, I definitely agree. One of the main things I tried to do as GV was get Viziers more active and another one of my main things was expanding the Office. I managed to get 2-3 more Viziers roped in and 3-5 new Officers working on it. I even appointed someone to take over duties to encourage action. Most recently, we’ve gotten some bot development in that supports the office.

However, I think at some point we have to accept that there is little interest in a time-consuming, dispassionate, thankless job like citizenship applications. We also need to keep in mind that, while there’s no official distinction (something I wish I had pursued more before I burnt out) but there is an unofficial distinction between Viziers who are more proactive vs reactive. Many retire into the office to be more like security reserves – waiting to be called into service in crisis, when they leap to action like no one you’ve seen before – while some elect to serve as more active duty guardians – keeping a close eye on different stats and tasks.

Due to our status as a feeder, particularly in a post-F/S stage where we have so many enemies, we need shields as much as we need swords. It’s not like these Viziers are doing nothing – they still endotart, they still talk when we need to, and they’ve acted on high alert situations from Fedele’s coup to the false flag del bump to the ConCrisis to Jo. And they have lives outside of NS, where they cannot contribute a lot of time to things that just aren’t fun.

So the reality is, we’ve tried a lot to reach this ideal of every Vizier lending a hand in citizenship applications, but the problem is it’s unattainable as long as we both have and need reactive Viziers alongside our proactive ones, and as long as who we add to the office is limited by who is actually interested (a necessary assumption and an incredibly limited pool).

So if there’s a situation where we can loosen the burden of this boring, thankless job that we need for our government to survive, I say go for it. In my experience, it’ll bring no harm. Besides, reclaiming citizenship afterwards anyway isn’t very difficult due to a lot of reforms we’ve made in the past, reforms that are younger than the clauses AMOM wants to edit. I see this as necessary but unfortunately delayed adjustment to the new reality.

Something else that’s unwritten and thus far unspoken is that forum admins should be doing IP checks on new citizens to make sure they’re not alts of banned accounts and / or hiding their IP and geo behind VPNs. There doesn’t seem to be any way that this has been legally reconciled besides loose references to fraud, but it should also be mentioned that there are only a small handful of Viziers who are able to do this (that will probably not be expanded). Provisions exist for admin to do it retroactively and for the Praesidium to “overrule the Office’s decision to grant Citizenship for reasons of regional security”, but it’s likely to be missed retrospectively like this.

I’m not saying we try to codify this right now, but it’s something else to consider.

As I understand, Citizenship can nearly immediately be regranted. So I don’t really see a lot of downside to good-faith Citizens.

I move to vote.

I second.