[Shelved] The Honorary Citizenship Amendment

[Tree of Wisdom]

This is rather a bill in progress but below is my proposal. It’s in 2 parts because I feel this is a very big thing! I would like feedback from you, and if you have any other ideas feel free to post as well! The add on’s are in green.
Part 1:
Section 6.1: Citizenship Applications
2. Any resident may apply for citizenship using their regional forum account, by providing the name of 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.

3. A copy of the laws applicants are pledging to obey must be available to them at all times.
4. An application for citizenship ceases to be valid if at any time the applicant's declared nation in The North Pacific is not located in The North Pacific.
5. Forum administration will have 14 days to evaluate the citizenship applicant and verify that they are not using a proxy or evading a judicially-imposed penalty. The Vice Delegate will have 7 days to perform a security evaluation and pass or fail the applicant. The Vice Delegate must consult the Security Council if there is reasonable concern as to whether an applicant should be admitted.
6. The Vice Delegate will automatically fail any applicant who identifies as fascist or has engaged in the promotion of fascism.
7. The Speaker will reject applicants who fail an evaluation by either forum administration or the Vice Delegate.
8. If an applicant is rejected for failing an evaluation by the Vice Delegate, the Regional Assembly shall immediately debate the rejection and will hold a majority vote on whether to uphold it. The vote must begin two days after the rejection occurs.
9. The Regional Assembly may overturn a previous decision to uphold the rejection of an applicant by majority vote.
10. The Speaker will accept all other applicants with valid applications.
11. The Speaker will process applications within 14 days. If an applicant has not been approved or rejected within that time, they will be automatically granted citizenship.
12. The World Assembly Delegate may nominate candidates for honorary citizenship to the Regional Assembly. The requirements to be nominated are nominee must have been in the region for 6 months, not convicted of any regional crimes, and the delegate must provide a valid reason as to why that nominee should be granted citizenship.
13. The nominee maybe asked questions by the regional assembly, and must provide their own reasoning as to why they need honorary citizenship. For honorary citizenship to be granted, the Regional Assembly must approve the nominee with 2/3 or majority voting in favor of the nominee.

Part II

“In part of this amendment, the nation known as @Hulldom hereby shall be the first person to be granted honorary citizenship of The North Pacific upon the passage of this amendment of the legal code.”

 

[St George]

First things first you need an operative clause. See here for what that looks like. There's also a few grammatical issues you need to address.

Whilst I know citizenship reform is partially driven by Hulldom, I'm not sure I like that this does both things at the same time. We do need to address the process, but I'd much rather some wider citizenship reform to address the problems present in our current process - it's not a legal requirement to have a residential IP address but the way the admin check to see if an applicant is not a proxy or avoiding a legally mandated ban means that it's become one. In a world where increasingly people don't have access to a residential IP (particularly in the developing world), that's not going to be fit for purpose for much longer.

 

[Pallaith]

@Tree of Wisdom I apologize for the delay in getting comments to you on this. I appreciate the goal you have here but I think the method you have chosen is the wrong approach. I’ll start with the fundamental issue with it: the concept of honorary citizenship itself. That is to say, what is it? How does it work? I take it your goal is to allow the RA to vote to make someone a citizen through an alternative process to citizenship. But that’s not what this says. This says they make them honorary citizens, without defining what they actually is. At the very least you would need to have such a definition, but if the definition is simply that they’re citizens through a new process, you might as well just make the bill an alternative process and scratch the honorary bit. In my experience, honorary anything is usually just a title or a recognition separate from the actual thing and doesn’t confer on someone the same rights or privileges that the normal version of the thing does. And if this were that (and I know it’s not what you’re trying to do here), then I wouldn’t even say we need it.

That aside, the specific wording and phrasing you used doesn’t quite match up with the rest of that section, and I don’t feel you need to specifically mention that they must ask questions or give statements - that’s typical for confirmations and these kinds of votes and we usually don’t specify that. Finally, we really don’t make changes that also involve a separate question as you do in part 2. What we would typically do here would be come up with the new process, and then once it exists, use it for someone we want to use it on. So Boston would be proposed by the delegate (as your process outlines), and then go through the steps you legislated. I don’t think it would be good for the first recipient of honorary citizenship to skip the actual process this bill is trying to create.

Just wanted to give you a chance to consider that feedback as I believe it will inform future proposals you may write. You will also note that I have submitted to the RA a proposal to reform out citizenship law, and there is actually some overlap in the requirements I outlined and the ones you have in this bill. It’s an entirely different process though and I encourage you to take a look at it. You’re welcome to propose alterations to it, just as you’re welcome to further work on this bill you have here if you feel there’s a significantly better process than the one I put forward. And as always, thanks for stepping up and taking a stab at proposing new legislation to the RA.