Reform of our citizenship law continues to be a relevant topic, and it is clear that we are far from being satisfied with the law as it stands. From the look of things, we may have another lengthy debate with sweeping changes on the way, but I believe there are smaller changes we can make in the short term that will modernize the process even further, reflect the reality of the process as it tends to work today, and address some of the problems we have seen. I take some inspiration not only from @Vivanco providing an easier way to self-manage citizenship, but also our Court in fairly adjudicating how to handle the discovery of processing errors by the Speaker that may leave them with no way to correct their mistake.
And part of how I have decided to do this also takes inspiration from @Sil Dorsett who changed the Vice Delegate check's processing time requirement. As the name of the bill suggests, I propose that all citizenship checks have the same maximum length to be performed: 7 days. In practice we simply do not see admins or the Speaker's office take 2 weeks to process apps. And if this were a consistent thing, we would not consider that to be a acceptable state of affairs. The only citizens who received citizenship for not being processed in two weeks in recent memory were people who the Speaker's office attempted to reject, but failed to do so properly. It simply has not been the norm as long as I have been active in this region for our applications to take that long to process. And if for some reason it does, in today's faster-paced game with repeated examples of how crucial we believe responding quickly and effectively to new players, we would be takin serious action. It is beyond time to update our requirement for this process, to reflect our current expectations and emphasize the speediness that we all expect.
I appreciate that cutting the timeline in half for the Speaker check in particular means that there's a more immediate consequence to them improperly processing an application. Setting aside that whether the wait was a week or two weeks, what happened with the improperly rejected applicants would have happened regardless, I have added a provision to help accommodate the accelerated timeline. This provision requires the Speaker's office to revoke citizenship if they discover that it was given out improperly, so they would now be able to respond to precisely the scenario that led to the recent r4r. It is important, however, not to leave this provision open for too long - the longer someone is involved as a citizen, the more their input and activity can affect what happens in the region, and the more potentially damaging removing them from the equation can be. We do not want to be too retroactive, especially because as a mandate it would force the Speaker to remove citizenship automatically as soon as the error is discovered, even if that happens years in the future and the player in question has been a pillar of the community. That is why I felt that two weeks was a reasonable amount of time for the office to discover potential issues. While I am not necessarily against this window being open longer, I feel that it should not be too wide - I suspect that if the mistake is not caught relatively soon after the citizenship is granted, it will probably end up being many months before it is discovered, if ever, and by that time, as I said earlier, I think that does more harm than good. I take a lot of guidance from the Court on the timing with this provision.
Finally, I wanted to revisit the admin check exemption in an important way. Similar to our recent law allowing citizens to revoke their citizenship voluntarily, I wanted them to be able to get an admin check that would pass muster in a standard citizenship application, so that the exemption granted to them is no longer in effect if it no longer has a reason to be. Obviously such citizens can request an admin check whenever they want, and the results would be known, but that wouldn't change the reality of their exemption. So I have proposed a provision that will have the exemption superseded in the event they successfully pass such an admin check, so that they are not left with the awkward process of dropping citizenship temporarily just to pass a new application. Whenever we can employ common sense and reasonable approaches to problems instead of jumping through unnecessary process hoops, I think we should aim to do so.
Let me know what you think.
And part of how I have decided to do this also takes inspiration from @Sil Dorsett who changed the Vice Delegate check's processing time requirement. As the name of the bill suggests, I propose that all citizenship checks have the same maximum length to be performed: 7 days. In practice we simply do not see admins or the Speaker's office take 2 weeks to process apps. And if this were a consistent thing, we would not consider that to be a acceptable state of affairs. The only citizens who received citizenship for not being processed in two weeks in recent memory were people who the Speaker's office attempted to reject, but failed to do so properly. It simply has not been the norm as long as I have been active in this region for our applications to take that long to process. And if for some reason it does, in today's faster-paced game with repeated examples of how crucial we believe responding quickly and effectively to new players, we would be takin serious action. It is beyond time to update our requirement for this process, to reflect our current expectations and emphasize the speediness that we all expect.
I appreciate that cutting the timeline in half for the Speaker check in particular means that there's a more immediate consequence to them improperly processing an application. Setting aside that whether the wait was a week or two weeks, what happened with the improperly rejected applicants would have happened regardless, I have added a provision to help accommodate the accelerated timeline. This provision requires the Speaker's office to revoke citizenship if they discover that it was given out improperly, so they would now be able to respond to precisely the scenario that led to the recent r4r. It is important, however, not to leave this provision open for too long - the longer someone is involved as a citizen, the more their input and activity can affect what happens in the region, and the more potentially damaging removing them from the equation can be. We do not want to be too retroactive, especially because as a mandate it would force the Speaker to remove citizenship automatically as soon as the error is discovered, even if that happens years in the future and the player in question has been a pillar of the community. That is why I felt that two weeks was a reasonable amount of time for the office to discover potential issues. While I am not necessarily against this window being open longer, I feel that it should not be too wide - I suspect that if the mistake is not caught relatively soon after the citizenship is granted, it will probably end up being many months before it is discovered, if ever, and by that time, as I said earlier, I think that does more harm than good. I take a lot of guidance from the Court on the timing with this provision.
Finally, I wanted to revisit the admin check exemption in an important way. Similar to our recent law allowing citizens to revoke their citizenship voluntarily, I wanted them to be able to get an admin check that would pass muster in a standard citizenship application, so that the exemption granted to them is no longer in effect if it no longer has a reason to be. Obviously such citizens can request an admin check whenever they want, and the results would be known, but that wouldn't change the reality of their exemption. So I have proposed a provision that will have the exemption superseded in the event they successfully pass such an admin check, so that they are not left with the awkward process of dropping citizenship temporarily just to pass a new application. Whenever we can employ common sense and reasonable approaches to problems instead of jumping through unnecessary process hoops, I think we should aim to do so.
Let me know what you think.
Accelerated Admission Act:
Accelerated Admission Act:
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