Citizenship Officer Handbook

University of the East Pacific
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Citizenship Officer Handbook

The Citizenship Office is an important cog in the machine of government within The East Pacific. Citizenship is the only way to acquire voting rights and to seek certain high offices in the region, and it is imperative that the Office administer citizenship in a way that promotes membership and inclusivity while preserving regional security. It is, after all, an arm of the Praesidium, the security branch. As a Citizenship Officer, it is your duty to accept/reject citizenships, process clerical changes, and assist the Grand Vizier in keeping the Citizenship list up to date. In some cases, that will include audits. This guide seeks to empower you for these duties.

Accepting/Rejecting Citizenship

This is the main duty you will be performing as a Citizenship Officer (hereinafter: Officer). In the past year, any given month has netted between 1 and 20 applications, so it’s important to be prepared. When you are processing an application, I request you notify the rest of the office in the citizenship-office channel of the discord. This is our headquarters, and it is crucial that we work as a unit. Considering the process for accepting citizenship involves private telegrams, it’s important to note which applications you are processing in order to ensure other Officers don’t begin to process the same one.

The process for accepting citizenship applications is simple and straightforward. An Officer must telegram the resident nation and WA nation listed in the application, and ask for confirmation that (a) they truly made the application and (b) the same individual controls both nations. This ensures there is no citizenship multiing. When asking, it is best to include a link to their application – Discourse offers the option to copy a link to a post directly from the forum thread. If the resident nation and the WA nation are the same, you only need ask that they made the application.

If an applicant lists “EPSA” as their WA, it is required that the Overseeing Officer confirm this in the thread. You may ping the Overseeing Officer in the citizenship-office channel, where they should have access. If they say their WA varies, or they’re in any other military, they cannot be accepted. If they say this but also provide a WA, remind them that they must inform us of every WA change as it occurs, or risk losing citizenship. The only reasons to ever deny applications are for security reasons (which MUST be cleared with the Grand Vizier), a lack of a valid WA nation, a lack of a valid TEP nation, or a lack of ratification of the Concordat.

Processing Clerical Changes

‘Clerical changes’ are changes to the citizenship roster. This can be a change in the recorded resident nation, a change in the recorded WA nation, or both. In clerical changes, there is no need for ratification of the Concordat. Just like in citizenship applications, new resident and WA nations must be confirmed through a telegram process. The only exception is if the new WA nation is the old resident nation, or vice versa. As always, it must be confirmed that resident nations reside in TEP and WA nations are WA members. As always, the Overseeing Officer must confirm EPSA status.

Whenever you approve a clerical change, it is imperative that you notify the Grand Vizier. The citizenship roster must be completely up to date in order to ensure that audits are fair and just and that referendums and delegate elections are not fraudulent. If the citizenship list is not updated, be sure to remind the Grand Vizier. The maintenance of the roster is our principal purpose. This also goes for the acceptance of new citizenships. Cooperation between the office is key to ensure no one is overworked and nothing slips through the cracks.

Audits

In an ideal world, the Grand Vizier will be the only person doing audits, but due to various other commitments and extenuating circumstances, it may fall on other Citizenship Officers to perform an audit or assist during an audit. Auditing involves looking through the citizenship roster and confirming that all resident nations remain in TEP, all WA nations remain in the WA, and all EPSA nations remain in the EPSA. This is the easy part. During an audit, the auditor will compile a list of all nations whose citizenships are in danger of revokation due to failure to comply with statutory law.

This list will be posted in the Citizenship thread and in a dispatch with the nation mention code, to ensure proper notification to the affected nations. However, common courtesy demands that we notify anyone we can find on discord, as well. The easiest way to do this is to mention the notifications role, anyone whose nation name is in their discord name, and anyone whose discord the auditor knows anyway. Mentioning their forum account is not strictly necessary, nor necessarily effective, however it is an additional failsafe that would be welcome if feasible.

Nations are given 48 hours to correct their failure. If they do not, their citizenship will be removed. Ideally, they would notify the Office if their nation is revived or rejoins the WA, but the auditor should always check the resident and WA status of the listed nations upon closure of the audit anyway. If a new nation is listed as the resident or WA nation, it follows the same procedure as a clerical change, and must be processed as such. Notification must be given in the same form to any nation whose citizenship has been revoked.

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