Citizenship Act

[Cormac]

1. Admittance to Citizenship
1. All persons who had citizenship prior to enactment of this Act will continue to maintain citizenship until such is legally removed under the terms of this Act.
2. Applicants for citizenship may only be admitted to citizenship if they have a nation residing in Taijitu, if they have properly completed the citizenship application, and if they have passed a security check conducted by forum administration.
3. The citizenship application will require applicants to disclose their nation in Taijitu, current regional and organizational affiliations in NationStates, and any other NationStates identities or aliases previously or currently in use by the applicant.
4. The citizenship application will require applicants to swear the following oath of citizenship:

I, [forum name], in sound mind and good conscience, do hereby declare my loyalty to the Citizens' Democracy of Taijitu and to the principles of the Glorious Revolution. I swear to respect and uphold the Constitution and the laws adopted by the Ecclesia. I recognize that should I break my oath I shall be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and that my citizenship may be forfeit.

2. Removal of Citizenship
1. The Citizen-Initiator will remove a person's citizenship if that person's nation in Taijitu has relocated to another region or ceased to exist, unless the nation is restored within seven days after relocation or ceasing to exist or prior to any election period.
2. Citizenship may be removed and future application for citizenship prohibited for a finite or indefinite period as part of sentencing imposed for crimes against Taijitu, according to the terms established by law.

3. Repeal of Previous Law
1. Legislation Concerning Citizenship is hereby repealed.

All right, this is basically a proposal to replace Legislation Concerning Citizenship. It's been brought up before that LCC is flawed in that it does not make the questions on the citizenship application mandatory and it does not contain provisions for removing citizenship once a citizen's nation has relocated or ceased to exist. This proposal basically deals with that while also eliminating some of the superfluous language found in LCC.

Thoughts?

[Delfos]

[Myroria]

Delfos, can you please explain some of your issues with the law? I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd like to hear what about it, exactly, you disagree with so we can work those issues out, if necessary.

I think it's a vast improvement over the current citizenship law; if I were to offer two suggestions, I'd say that maybe we should include a clause specifying that a full Ecclesia vote could revoke citizenship - but since the Ecclesia can technically legislate anything it wants at all, I'm not sure if that's strictly necessary. I would also consider moving the clause about repealing the previous law closer to the beginning; I have no real reason other than that I think it would look more elegant not at the end.

[Delfos]

I don't like the symbolic stuff to get in the way of citizenship like the oath, copy pasting an oath means nothing.

I like the idea of reintroducing an oath so long as it's simple and to the point. I'm not sure how I feel about a questionnaire though. Any questions that would be useful, like history of previous bans, could just be left out and there wouldn't be any easy way to check that. On the other hand, I can see the value in a simple question asking for a brief background in getting to know the applicant and making them feel a bit more vested.

Regardless, I do think the process by which applications are submitted, reviewed, rejected, and possibly appealed to a vote of the Ecclesia, should be formalized and there should be some standard form to fill in, even if the information is the same as now.

In case we change our process, I believe Gulliver summed an acceptable proposal. Yet i'm still not sold in the institutionalization of the citizenship process.

I do want the access to participation to be "effortless" as you say, the less things people need to do to participate the better.
(...)
I'd rather people not have any restrictions accessing Ecclesia and that someone else to have the trouble finding out if someone is ok or not, because that already happens

How ironic, we seem to be doing that still, so much fighting to end up doing the same thing over and over.

In other words, if you can't be Stasi, don't pretend you can, this system adds no real security, it's a false statement of security, the same way the oath is.

Oh, beware of the oath breakers.

So to cut things short, delete the Oath part, reinstate that Ecclesia decides to remove citizenship, make the initiator manage the list, make Regional Security a thing is you want to institutionalize what admins already do or incorporate it on this bill.

[Myroria]

 

I always liked the oath, probably because I'm an RPer who likes little touches like that. To me its in the same vein as writing formal letters when conducting foreign affairs, having an invented calendar, etc. Yes it doesn't have much practical use but I don't think it's a serious impediment to gaining citizenship. If someone is really incapable of copy-pasting an oath and substituting their name in, I don't know if we could count on them to be particularly active anyway.

You make good points on whether or not the answers in the questionnaire should be necessary, and I think at this point it's been bandied around so much I'll just agree to disagree. As far as I can see it, the point of the questionnaire is so that if/when someone lies, we have hard evidence to punish them with if they later do something bad. If you're a spy and lie on the "other regions" part of the questionnaire, then get caught, we can prosecute you for lying or use your lying in a formal espionage trial.

To me, it's the same this as asking someone "Have you made any money illegally" on your tax return. No one is going to answer yes, but if you find out they did make money illegally, you can charge them with tax evasion.

[Delfos]

If you're a spy and lie on the "other regions" part of the questionnaire, then get caught, we can prosecute you for lying or use your lying in a formal espionage trial.

If you're a spy and are caught with such lie, you're bad and you should feel bad, off with ye head. A good spy would never do such a thing...how do I know? Do I? I don't know, I'm not a spy.

[Khem]

I like the update.

[Cormac]

if I were to offer two suggestions, I'd say that maybe we should include a clause specifying that a full Ecclesia vote could revoke citizenship - but since the Ecclesia can technically legislate anything it wants at all, I'm not sure if that's strictly necessary.

I don't think it hurts to make that explicit, since we're addressing citizenship in this legislation anyway. I'll incorporate it into the next draft, sometime tomorrow.

I would also consider moving the clause about repealing the previous law closer to the beginning; I have no real reason other than that I think it would look more elegant not at the end.

Hmm, good point. I'll do that too.

[Cormac]

Next draft. Sorry, meant to have this posted earlier and got distracted from it:

1. Repeal of Previous Law
1. Legislation Concerning Citizenship is hereby repealed.

2. Admittance to Citizenship
1. All persons who held citizenship prior to enactment of this Act will continue to maintain citizenship until such is legally removed under the terms of this Act.
2. Applicants for citizenship may only be admitted to citizenship if they have a nation residing in Taijitu, if they have properly completed the citizenship application, and if they have passed a security check conducted by forum administration.
3. The citizenship application will require applicants to disclose their nation in Taijitu, current regional and organizational affiliations in NationStates, and any other NationStates identities or aliases previously or currently in use by the applicant.
4. The citizenship application will require applicants to swear the following oath of citizenship:

I, [forum name], in sound mind and good conscience, do hereby declare my loyalty to the Citizens' Democracy of Taijitu and to the principles of the Glorious Revolution. I swear to respect and uphold the Constitution and the laws adopted by the Ecclesia. I recognize that should I break my oath I shall be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and that my citizenship may be forfeit.

3. Removal of Citizenship
1. The Citizen-Initiator will remove a person's citizenship if that person's nation in Taijitu has relocated to another region or ceased to exist, unless the nation is restored within seven days after relocation or ceasing to exist or prior to any election period.
2. A person's citizenship may be removed by simple majority vote of the Ecclesia, and may only be reinstated by simple majority vote of the Ecclesia if removed in such manner.

[Cormac]

I move to vote on the above draft.

[Khem]

Seconded.

[Myroria]

I'll second.