Citizenship Application Amendment Act

Peeps

Peeps

Foreign Envoy
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Citizenship Application Amendment Act:
Section 6.1, Clause 2 of the Legal Code will be amended as follows:
2. Any resident may apply for citizenship using their regional forum account, by providing a link to their nation in The North Pacific, and swearing an oath as follows:
I pledge loyalty to The North Pacific, obedience to her laws, and responsible action as a member of her society. I pledge to only register one nation to vote in The North Pacific. I pledge that no nation under my control will wage war against the North Pacific. I understand that if I break this oath I may permanently lose my voting privileges. In this manner, I petition the Speaker for citizenship in The North Pacific.
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The only change in this would be adding the ability for the Speakers Office to process applications that include the nation's pretitle. Right now that is the most common reason that causes the Speakers Office rejects applications.

Edited to change to links only for reasons detailed below
 
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There's no reason to not approve this, it simply speeds up the citizen application process. It's also less of a hassle on applying citizens, the speaker, and their deputies.
 
Wouldn't including a pretitle make it more difficult to look up the applicant's nation and potentially cause mismatches.

Ex,
Pretitle: United States - Nation ID: America
Nation ID: United States of America
 
TlomzKrano:
Wouldn't including a pretitle make it more difficult to look up the applicant's nation and potentially cause mismatches.
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Potentially. However I personally have never had a case of such a thing occuring while processing nations, and the chances that both would be residing in TNP would make it even more unlikely for such a thing to happen.

Also, weighing the costs and benefits, the incredibly slim chance that a mismatch occurs is far outweighed by the weekly rejections due to a newer player not knowing the pretitle doesn't count.
 
Peeps:
Potentially. However I personally have never had a case of such a thing occuring while processing nations, and the chances that both would be residing in TNP would make it even more unlikely for such a thing to happen.

Also, weighing the costs and benefits, the incredibly slim chance that a mismatch occurs is far outweighed by the weekly rejections due to a newer player not knowing the pretitle doesn't count.
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Fair, why dont we just side step all of this and require a link to their nation.
 
Any old timers who could explain why the pretitle is a crucial aspect of the oath? Because this seems like a slam dunk to me. As a former Speaker, I have to say that turning people away who are clearly in the region and otherwise correctly completed the oath sucks.

I’m inclined to support this.
 
TlomzKrano:
Fair, why dont we just side step all of this and require a link to their nation.
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That's a good idea. For now I will put it in the act as an option, however if others think everyone should just use it I'd not be opposed to making that the only choice.
 
As a boomer in the Speaker's Office I'm in a good place to speak on this: this is a no-brainer.
 
Peeps:
That's a good idea. For now I will put it in the act as an option, however if others think everyone should just use it I'd not be opposed to making that the only choice.
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Cool, Id like to see input from VD and Admins on any aspect of this complicating their jobs tho.

But otherwise Id support a link to the nation.
 
From a recruitment/mentoring perspective, this may also help us retain members who would otherwise be discouraged from staying by having to reapply for citizenship. Full support on both the pretitle and link ideas.
 
Pallaith:
Any old timers who could explain why the pretitle is a crucial aspect of the oath? Because this seems like a slam dunk to me. As a former Speaker, I have to say that turning people away who are clearly in the region and otherwise correctly completed the oath sucks.

I’m inclined to support this.
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Presumably the reasoning was because it's important to know if "The Hoppy of Praeceps" or "The Republic of The Hoppy of Praeceps".

A nation link would avoid that mess altogether so I like permitting that in addition.
 
Some nations have a form of pretitle as part of the nation's name. I support this, but would like to have a nation link in the application just in case. Though I suppose that worst-case scenario, an applicant could be asked to clarify which nation is theirs.
 
Looks good. Though I would like prefer if there is a clause added permitting the Speaker's Office to clarify about the identity of the applicant, wherever necessary.
 
This is a pointless change in the law - the Speaker's Office can already accept nations who provide a pretitle and existing law supports that. The only place where it says pretitles is disallowed was in the opening post of the Citizenship Application topic, which should merely be amended to better reflect the legal reality. My own attempt to do so at the end of the last term went some way to do this, by removing an explicit mention of pretitles from that post, but the wording remains clunky:
  • When registering for Citizenship, one has to refer to their actual nation nation (i.e. the nation name you type in when logging on to NationStates).
  • Basically, either:
    1. A link to your nation on NationStates (the nation tag helps),
    2. Referring to your nation by its name without prefixes (for example, Olvern instead of The Republic of Olvern in the registration post),
    is NECESSARY for the Speaker's Office to process your application. Do not assume that the Speaker's Office is all-knowing.
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Fix this and this proposed amendment becomes unneeded.
 
St George:
This is a pointless change in the law - the Speaker's Office can already accept nations who provide a pretitle and existing law supports that. The only place where it says pretitles is disallowed was in the opening post of the Citizenship Application topic, which should merely be amended to better reflect the legal reality. My own attempt to do so at the end of the last term went some way to do this, by removing an explicit mention of pretitles from that post, but the wording remains clunky:
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From what I was told, in both your term and now Robes' term is that we are not to accept applications that have the pretitle. If there is this much confusion about the law, it would make sense to clarify it just to ensure that further confusion does not occur.
 
Peeps:
From what I was told, in both your term and now Robes' term is that we are not to accept applications that have the pretitle. If there is this much confusion about the law, it would make sense to clarify it just to ensure that further confusion does not occur.
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I don't believe I ever told you that was the case. In fact I distinctly recall saying to leave it to your best judgement. I will concede however that during my term it was the case that sometimes applications were denied due to including the pretitle. This was not the case I believe in most instances where the pretitle was included.

The law infers upon the Speakers Office the power to decide what is a valid application and what isn't. Where not limited by statute or court ruling, that power, like many of the Office's powers, is absolute. I don't believe denying an application on the basis of a pretitle would survive a request for review, but that doesn't really mean that the law needs changing. It just needs setting out in the Citizenship Application topic more clearly depending on the policy of the Speaker of the day. I'd much rather leave that a power for the Speaker to decide to be honest, than amend the law.
 
It sounds like the flexibility already exists, so this bill would strike me as unnecessary. I hated denying apps for technicalities and our laws do have a lot of them, but this thankfully appears to be an area where further legal changes are not needed to fix technicalities. Given a workable solution has been proposed, I would advise pursuing that and shelving this bill.
 
The assertion that it is in the Speakers power to accept applications that have a nations pretitle in it is not supported by the law and the R4R on the citizens oath.

The law says the applicant must provide their nation name. Pretitles have never been part of a nations name. They are embellishments of a nations name. My nation is Dreadton. It is not the Countdown to CTE of Dreadton. The R4R clearly states that there is to be no embellishments upon the oath. the Nations name is part of that oath.
 
I concur with St George and Pallaith that the law as it stands does not prohibit nation names that include pretitles from being accepted. NationStates has long been clear that there are two versions of a nation's name - a long one (with the pretitle) and a short one - and the long name is used in several places, including displaying a region's Delegate, Founder and Regional Officers. In fact, I believe it used to be the case that NS BBCode used the long name by default.

As a note, while I was Speaker, what I did when I encountered these situations was to inform the applicant about pretitles (as they could be quite confusing to newcomers) but accept their citizenship application anyway.
 
Gorundu:
NationStates has long been clear that there are two versions of a nation's name
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I would like to know specifically where they are clear on this.

I lean more on the side of where Dreadton is coming from, when NS asks you for your nation name, such as when logging in, mentioning in the RMB, or using the API, if you use your pretitle it won't work. It seems to be that a pretitle would be an embellishment, if you cannot embellish your oath it seems logical that a pretitle is not allowed.
 
Peeps:
I would like to know specifically where they are clear on this.

I lean more on the side of where Dreadton is coming from, when NS asks you for your nation name, such as when logging in, mentioning in the RMB, or using the API, if you use your pretitle it won't work. It seems to be that a pretitle would be an embellishment, if you cannot embellish your oath it seems logical that a pretitle is not allowed.
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The existence of both versions of a nation name throughout the site is evidence enough. If you want anything explicit, I'd say this dispatch by Testlandia demonstrates that a nation's "full name" is the one with the pretitle.

Anyway, the argument that using a pretitle constitutes embellishment of the oath under the current laws is nonsense. The oath does not even require the nation name. Both of you, Peeps and Dreadton, have been Deputy Speakers, so you should know that the nation name is provided separately from the oath, and this is clear from Section 6.1.2 of the Legal Code as well.
 
As clarified by the Speaker when asked about it on Discord last month, the current policy of the Speaker’s Office is to not accept applications that include pre-titles or links. With that being said, a revival of this thread must happen. Does anyone have any concerns, questions, or arguments against accepting pre-titles and links?
 
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I agree that we should move forward. However following commentary and my own doubts, I have amended the bill to change it so that the speakers office will only accept links to nations. This will make it easier on the office to quickly check if a nation is active and residing in TNP. Furthermore it will remove the possibility, however rare, that a pretitle can confuse one nation for another. I'll leave this open for a bit longer due to this change.
 
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Is there anyone who disagrees strongly with making the citizen's application require a link instead of their nation's name?
 
I disagree strongly with any move that makes it more difficult for someone to achieve citizenship. Just do your jobs and check for the nation.
 
St George:
I disagree strongly with any move that makes it more difficult for someone to achieve citizenship. Just do your jobs and check for the nation.
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I don't quite follow your logic here. People are rejected for putting their pretitle in their application constantly. The current Speaker has made it the policy that because of the questionable legality of pretitles and the chance, however small, of mixing up nations that they should not be accepted.

If an applicant just has to get the link to their nation, which is an absolutely trivial task of copying and pasting, a task that applicants must preform anyways in order to say the oath correctly, it adds no burden. Furthermore it makes the job of doing the Speakers check a tad faster. Thus it is a win-win in terms of less applicants denied for silly reasons, and quicker checks.
 
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Peeps:
I don't quite follow your logic here. People are rejected for putting their pretitle in their application constantly. The current Speaker has made it the policy that because of the questionable legality of pretitles and the chance, however small, of mixing up nations that they should not be accepted.

If an applicant just has to get the link to their nation, which is an absolutely trivial task of copying and pasting, a task that applicants must preform anyways in order to say the oath correctly, it adds no burden. Furthermore it makes the job of doing the Speakers check a tad faster. Thus it is a win-win in terms of less applicants denied for silly reasons, and quicker checks.
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Part of the Speakers Check is to check that the nation listed with their application is a nation in the region. It is a remarkably simple task. There is no legal mandate for the Office to deny on the basis of including a pre-title. That is a responsibility the office took upon itself. It can be done away with in an instant. That would be a much, much better solution than making it harder for an applicant to become a citizen by putting further barriers in front of them.
 
St George:
Part of the Speakers Check is to check that the nation listed with their application is a nation in the region. It is a remarkably simple task. There is no legal mandate for the Office to deny on the basis of including a pre-title. That is a responsibility the office took upon itself. It can be done away with in an instant. That would be a much, much better solution than making it harder for an applicant to become a citizen by putting further barriers in front of them.
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Once again, as all applicants copy paste the oath and many copy paste their nation name, what is the barrier that is being put up by having them copy paste the link? I am not going to rehash the entire are pretitles a valid part of your nation name, but there is sufficient reason to doubt that they are. The law requires your nation name currently and the Speakers office is applying that how they interpret it.
 
The Speakers Office is applying it incorrectly. We don't need legislation to fix your ongoing mistake.
 
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