True, but the PM doesn’t decide whether someone becomes a citizen or not.
No, it doesn’t say that in the proposed legislation amendment.
Alright let’s try this thread.
Qaz want some chill pills?
If you are targetting me and intend to harass me, it won’t be tolerated.
I will have substantive responses to this debate later this evening, but for now I request that everyone remain on topic. Irrelevant discussion of a personal nature should be taken elsewhere.
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Wasn’t trying to. That was a nice way of me telling you to calm tf down.
As Chair, I am instructing you to cease these irrelevant personal attacks immediately. No further warnings will be issued. Thank you for your compliance.
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Support.
Re: Bel and UDS’s objections, I would note that the Assembly’s oversight ability over the CRS is legally no different to its oversight ability over CitComm. I will also note that CRS members are subject to yearly retention votes as well.
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Okay, before the discussion gets too off track.
Are people not interested in checking if we have multiple accounts voting multiple times from the same IP address?
I think the concern about who appoints CitComm is a bit overblown seeing as whoever that is can’t remove CitComm members, and whoever they do want to appoint is subject to both Assembly confirmation and retention votes.
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My question would be whether the “conspicuous ineligibility” criterion would not already cover such a concern, since Section 2 of the Citizenship Act (which is left unamended in Welly’s proposed amendment) does specify that an eligible Citizen should not be “attempting to join with multiple nations or identities”. Since CitComm is able to consult relevant institutions with access to such information, anyone attempting to attain citizenship multiple times from the same IP address should still be deemed as “conspicuously ineligible”.
On a related note, how long do IP checks usually take, relative to the length of current citizenship application processing?
Maybe I misunderstood your reasoning, but from your comment what I’ve understood is that the CitComm/CRS need to check the IP addresses of citizens in order to be able to be sure that there’s no one "attempting to join with multiple nations or identities”, or even that has joined if the amendment passes as it is now.
From my understanding, this is the point Pronoun is trying to make: IP checks are inevitably essential to be sure that nobody is trying to break the law.
For now I’m against the change of the Citizenship Act regarding IP checks, but I was wondering: what about we didn’t require CitComm members to check for IPs when accepting citizenship application, but we required them to check the IPs of all the new citizens before a PM/Delegate election starts? In that way they would be no more clogging of citizenship applications and the CitComm would have more freedom deciding when to check the IPs.
My point is that the wording would not result in no IP checks occuring, since they would still be necessary for determining “conspicuous ineligibility”. That is, the wording of the amendment does not eliminate necessary security checks from the citizenship application process.
As to your proposed idea, this wouldn’t work since Citizenship is still a prerequisite for Legislatorship, so you could end up with multiple accounts from the same individual in the Assembly.
Yes. I just don’t think I’d describe that as “conspicuous” information.
I have them mostly automated — other CitComm members less so, to my knowledge — but for me it’s probably less than a minute per application. (I’ve shared access to my tooling but it’s not really in a user-friendly format if you don’t know how to use/like using your computer terminal.)
I’d echo Nwahs’ comments about legislator access as well, but would also note that I don’t think we could handle special elections this way because we often would not have any advance notice that a resignation/special election was coming.
(Also, we often encourage people to apply for citizenship before an election, so as to vote in it, so unfortunately it would be like procrastinating on the checks until we are at our busiest.)
I think this is a reasonable goal. I do think we could accomplish it more directly. For instance something along the lines of:
Citizenship Act
…
3. Citizenship Registrations
…
(2) The Citizenship Committee will strive to confirm the reception of each application, and then at least one member of the Citizenship Committee will determine the eligibility of the applicant in consultation with any other institutions of the Coalition as needed, and accept or deny each applicant based on that determination.
I get that “government officials” is vague but this feels needlessly clunky to me. If a government official can already “you need to be a citizen to join my ministry” then why can’t they make that broader and say “you don’t need to be a citizen, just pass the same checks as a citizen” without having to ask the PM or CRS to request the checks for them? They’re not getting the content of the checks, just the result, the same way the result of citizenship applications are public.
I get that this is a rephrasing of the current provision. Can we consider for a moment whether this is useful? In practice, if you can see your post, then of course CitComm can too. If the goal is to get rid of asking a second opinion on each application, then I think you’d just end up with a bunch of “your application is received” posts followed up immediately with “your application is accepted/denied” and at that point the first post feels kind of useless.
There’s a mix of reasons - part of it is a well founded opposition to giving too much power to a security body that has regularly demonstrated themselves to be overly paranoid and lacking of a sense of humour, part of it is a belief that citizenship is a fundamental political right and that as a result of this decisions relating to it should remain in the political sphere. I also consider the Prime Minister to be more accountable than the CRS.
I will be posting an updated draft of this legislation soon, which addresses some of the comments received in this thread as well as several other issues with the citizenship process that I have noticed in further reviewing the Citizenship Act. In the meantime, a few responses / questions:
I hadn’t really thought about security checks being used in that way. Does any government official actually do that, or have they in the past? I saw this clause as more focused on the monitoring of potential security threats, which would fall squarely in the ambit of the CRS and PM.
Just to clarify, do CitComm members post the “application received” notice after they have already completed their review of that application and are simply waiting for sign off from a second member? If so, then I agree that this can be eliminated if we remove two-level review. But if not, then I would like to retain this provision. The simple acknowledgement that CitComm has seen someone’s application and is handling it seems at least marginally likely to encourage someone to stick around a few more days and see if they get accepted. Total silence can be read as CitComm ignoring their application, even though as a logical matter the applicant should be aware that CitComm can see the application.
I will have much more to say about the CRS-oversight issue when I post a revised draft. But Belschaft’s point seems to get to the heart of the matters, so I wanted to respond briefly now.
First, I agree that citizenship is a fundamental political right. As such, the criteria for obtaining and maintaining citizenship should be established in the political sphere. And they are–by the Assembly. Likewise, the unlawful denial of citizenship–and its attendant voting rights–should be challengeable in Court. And it is.
That said, I firmly disagree that the application of citizenship criteria to determine the eligibility of individual citizenship applicants should be influenced by the political process or be decided in the political sphere. Citizenship is the gateway to voting rights. Decisions about who gets to vote should be made by impartial, expert bodies that are insulated from political pressure. Those decisions should not be made by politicians whose primary interest is obtaining votes for themselves and limiting votes for their opponents. It is far from clear to me why the Prime Minister, a political official interested in obtaining votes, should be appointing the Committee that decides who gets to vote for PM.
There are other reasons why I support moving appointment and oversight of CitComm to the CRS, some of which were detailed in my initial post. But the fact that citizenship is a political right strikes me as a reason to remove its adjudication from the hands of politicians, not the other way around.
I don’t think that’s the only function. For instance, I believe our recruiters are citizens. It’s not really that sensitive, but technically each recruiter can send out whatever they want, and it’ll go out as an “official” message on behalf of our region but nobody else can really see or verify what’s being sent. Obviously, I don’t think there’s that much risk there, but I also don’t think it’s unreasonable for a government official to prefer some general screening (not a detailed investigation of someone as a potential security threat, mind you) before granting recruiter access. Or, for instance, I think it’s reasonable to run some general screening before promoting folks up to a certain level in the SPSF.
Yes. But even if not…
What’s the point in posting “your application has been received” if you’re just going to post “your application has been accepted” ten minutes later?
That’s fair. I’m not sure if that is really done today, but I can see why it could be a useful tool to have available.
But “government officials” still feels excessively broad and vague. Which ones? All of them? Does every government official, including, say, the Deputy Minister for Trading Cards, need this authority? I could see PM, Cabinet, and CRS being a reasonable list. Thoughts?
Right that was my question. If that is the way it will work with only one layer of review, then I would be fine eliminating this provision.
I’d throw in the Admiralty? I also wouldn’t mind if it’s limited to SPSF members and applicants only or something. I don’t think it’s a big deal personally (as I’ve previously commented, we’d only be sharing the results and not the contents of the security checks, and the results are effectively public already for any citizenship application) but honestly don’t think it’s a huge deal either way.
I was thinking MoD (or PM acting in MoD’s position on the Admiralty if one isn’t appointed) could handle for the SPSF. But I’m also fine adding the Admiralty.
Alright, well, it took me a bit longer to get back to this than I had planned. But below is a new draft of the Citizenship Committee reform bill. It makes the following changes from the original proposal:
- Provides that all citizenship applications shall be assigned to one member of CitComm for review and approval / denial based on a “conspicuously ineligible” standard. This was the original intent of the legislation, and the new language simply clarifies the intended restructuring of CitComm processes.
- Removes the requirement that CitComm publicly confirm receipt of applications. Given that CitComm’s current practice is to confirm receipt when once member of the Committee has completed their review, there would be no need for such confirmations if this bill passes. That’s because the bill provides that only one CitComm member need review each application, so, once that review is complete, the reviewing CitComm member can simply post an acceptance or denial, rather than confirming receipt of the application and then following up immediately with an acceptance or denial.
- Clarifies the the determination of conspicuous ineligibility is to be made “based on the information available to members of the Citizenship Committee.” This change is intended to preserve CitComm’s ability to consider confidential information to which it has access (e.g., IP addresses) in making citizenship determinations. Without this clarification, such information might be considered inconspicuous and therefore off limits for citizenship application review.
- Modifies the citizenship eligibility requirements to make clear that a member actually must be seeking citizenship in bad faith to be ineligible, not simply that a CitComm member opines to that effect. The current requirement, perhaps inadvertently, seems to put all citizenship denials–however arbitrary and capricious–entirely beyond judicial review. While I believe that judicial review of citizenship denials should be highly deferential, it should not be impossible to obtain in egregious cases.
- Adds Cabinet ministers and the Admiralty as institutions that can request that CitComm run additional security checks on a citizen.