Until this Government, the accepted practice was for pretty much anything to be admissible as the essay, even if it wasn't an "essay" in the classical sense. And now your proposed bill suggests instead a "test of basic knowledge about Talossa."

This is just a further step in the wrong direction. The decision to make it harder to immigrate by "raising the bar" has been a failure.

The facts are bitter and indisputable: the immigration rate has dropped by nearly half. We need a new approach.

Yeah, I don't feel too strongly I guess about any of the changes in particular. Those were just my first thoughts about this to simplify and make things a little more welcoming.

Wow very nice!

@Sir Lüc , I have some requests about how Wittenberg can be organized to be less intimidating to newcomers.

I'd like to request that the boards for La Società Talossan dal Siensiă-ficziun, del Fantasieu es del Wiski, Fora Talossa, El C'hlub Saxhitourófil, and el Cußeglh del Futbol Talossan be placed as subboards under a "Clubs" board, similar to the current setup for "Political Parties." 

I'd also request an "Archived" board with the two archived boards as subboards under that.

I'd also like to request that the two Ziu boards be put as subboards under "The Lobby."

I'd also like to request the deletion of the Funziun and Forziuns Armeschti boards, with their contents moved to under "The Lobby" as well.

Currently, we have thirty top-level boards.  These changes would reduce that to twenty-two, making things at least slightly more manageable and less intimidating.  Most of these boards are only needed by people with special roles who will go looking for them, and some aren't needed at all.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC on June 28, 2025, 08:09:23 PMI just realised that this debate is happening on your Party's forum. Sorry, I didn't realise, I usually wouldn't go into someone's house and tell them they're talking nonsense. I'm going to respond, but feel free to tell me to move it elsewhere if it's not appropriate.

It's okay, since we're already discussing, but I appreciate the thought :)  Typically discussing it elsewhere would be my preference, but also I'm happy to post a clean version of this policy page in the future.  Not a big deal.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC on June 28, 2025, 08:09:23 PMBut the central point remains: you know perfectly well, though you are using rhetorical trickery to bury it, that Talossa is getting more than enough citizenship applications. If we acknowledge that Government policy is currently suceeding in this regard, the next question is twofold:

- how to turn applicants into citizens?
- how to attract good quality applicants, who are actually interested in becoming active citizens?

It's clear that you actually understand the real problem, in that you're talking about reaching out to specific communities who might be interested in participating Talossan life. You give the example of heraldry nerds. So you agree that there are a specific *kind* of person we should be looking for. Fine. The Government has its own ideas on that regard. Opening the Landing Pier to broad micronational society is part of that.

The Government's interest in putting an end to spam applications which use ChatGPT essays is entirely of a piece with that. Face facts - no-one, not never who has produced an essay written with ChatGPT or whatever has ever gone on to successfully become a citizen. Not one. Because use of ChatGPT shows that they're not really interested in becoming part of our Talossan community. You really seem to think that we should let all kinds of spam entries through because spammers might decide to become citizens after participating. I disagree.

The central point is that immigration has plunged by almost 50% under this Government.  And while I suppose we might argue about whether policing essays made things worse, it kind of seems besides the point, since we still have the problem!

If a wall in our house is crumbling, then it might not have made any difference when the construction crew hung some shelves on it.  Doesn't make any sense to me to do that, but okay... in the end, does it really matter?  "We probably didn't make it worse" isn't much to brag about, and we still have a crumbling wall!

You're in charge, and you've dropped the ball: immigration levels have plummeted by almost half.

The people of Talossa deserve a government that sets this as a major priority, not one that has to be forced into thinking about the topic.  As I explained initially:  If this was a priority, what would we expect our Government to do?

Draw attention to the problem.  One of the most fundamental parts of leadership is helping to direct attention.  Since this is a serious crisis, and the Government has admitted they are at a loss, they should be shouting to the rooftops for help.  We have many citizens who pay only intermittent attention: perhaps one of them might have an idea.

Try new things.  The Government's signature policy on immigration was to make it harder to immigrate by barring any applicants with an essay of low quality.  This approach has rightfully been abandoned, but what has replaced it?  If we can't just advertise our "pile of garbage," then there must be other ideas.

We should be trying lots of things, since if we try nothing, we're certain to achieve exactly that: nothing.  Maybe we focus on our strengths with heraldry, and appeal to the online heraldic community?  Maybe we incentivize recruiting with awards, and publicize those awards with recorded video speeches?  Maybe we explore reaching out to former Old Growthers to invite them back?  Maybe we offer prizes for Talossan language writing, and then advertise those prizes on conlang forums?

Set goals.  The immigration rate has nearly halved during this Government's time in office.  Faced with that problem, a Government that was serious would set a goal for recovery.  An actual goal would demonstrate accountability.  It's much better than simply accepting decline.

As you might recall, the phrase that you used, D:na Seneschal, was "quality over quantity."  You said you wanted to "raise the bar" for applicants.  It's unclear how much effect the policy change of rejecting some applicants due to their essays might have had, since it was applied under considerable scrutiny and abandoned after a couple of months, but it doesn't seem to have helped at all.  And just recently, you signaled the Government's intent to institute a test for citizens.  This is the wrong direction for the country.

I also think there's questions of management -- a cheerful and colorful public image, along with actually trying things like looking at the process.  The immigration form has something like thirty steps, including boxes to be expanded and questions and checkboxes and an essay -- have we looked at this and seen if it can be improved?  Have we looked at our websites and seen if they can be made more welcoming?  What exactly has even been attempted?

Usually, this question might be muddled.  Usually, there's no clear and obvious lever to pull.  But for the upcoming election, the choice is between "we don't know what's wrong with this pile of garbage" and "let's try some things."

I think the "stop making it harder to immigrate" lever would work great.  Also, I'd pull the "try some different things like the things I suggested" lever.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC on June 24, 2025, 01:29:07 AMWHEREAS the Túischac'h of the Cosa has requested amendments to the law on Terpelaziuns to enable him to more effectively moderate official questions to the Government, responses, supplementary questions, and to maintain decorum therein:

BE IT ENACTED by the King, Cosa and Senäts of Talossa in Ziu assembled that:

1. El Lexhatx H.1.2.3.2, which currently reads:

Quote1.2.3.2 Once the first (round of) supplementary question(s) have been answered, the floor shall be considered open to contributions from other Members of the Cosă and Senators. Any questions posed in this stage shall not be bound by any formal time constraints.

is hereby deleted in its entirety.

2. A new section to be added to El Lexhatx, numbered H.1.2.5, as follows:

Quote1.2.5. The presiding officer of the questioner's House shall enforce decorum in both Terpelaziuns and answers to Terpelaziuns. The presiding Officer may require questioners to rephrase Terpelaziuns, or Ministers or their substitutes to rephrase answers to Terpelaziuns, to maintain decorum. In cases of continued violations, the presiding Officer may instruct the questioner or the Minister or their substitute to withdraw or apologise for a statement or comment, and remove any such statement or comment from the record in the absence of such withdrawal or apology; or disallow any further supplementary questions and responses to the Terpelaziun at issue.

This bill looks fine in form and function, with one exception: it needs the sponsorship at the bottom.  Assuming that's fixed, I vote to approve.

This will not mandate such a donation by my reading.  If that's the intention here, then it's otherwise fine, and I vote to approve.

That's true!  And I am doing my best by trying to focus national interest on this topic through public speeches and parliamentary questions.

When the immigration rate dropped down to zero because the application was broken, it was the Opposition that started loudly demanding answers.  And when help was needed, I personally pitched in to fix the problem.

And now that it's been months and months with only meagre improvement, we are again trying to force the Government to actually do something to fix the problem.  We want to make this crisis very public and very widely-known, so that you guys will be embarrassed enough to try some new things.

The Progressive Alliance works hard to participate in positive aspects of civil life to improve our country.  The leader of the Progressive Alliance runs our social media, and he does so in a positive and fun way.  I have led and fought hard to reduce the toxicity in our country with the summit -- I wrote the bill coming up for a vote and I have been organizing the whole effort, as you know.  I also am the author of some cultural efforts to promote our language, working with the Government to make them a reality.

And of course, we work to help matters in another way: we are campaigning to replace this Government.  The Progressive Alliance does a lot from the Opposition, but we will be able to do even more if we return to lead and put things right.

I didn't have a chance to comment on the merits of the bill before it hit the CRL, so outside of that, I'll note that replacing the essay with a test is a really poor plan, and likely to discourage potential immigrants.  So I will be voting against this.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC on June 24, 2025, 02:05:40 AMshall be amended by deletion of the phrase "upon certification from the Ministry of Immigration that the prospective citizen has sufficient understanding of Talossan life and culture for full participation".

This should be changed by adding in the following text:

Subsections 7.1 through 7.12 shall remain in their current form.

This prevents any ambiguous reading wherein the entire section is replaced with the above.  I think the bill would probably be okay without it, but this is more clear and it is my recommendation.

For extra points, the sponsor could even instead make the altered section 7 into a new subsection 7.1 and then direct the Scribe to renumber all subsections within section 7 to accommodate, although then we'll need to check for any cross-references.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on June 04, 2025, 07:49:49 PMI is a title of el Lexhatx.  El Lexhatx is divided up into titles, which are then divided into sections, and then into subsections, and then into subsubsections, and so on.  Please fix the spots where you have used erroneous and confusing labels.  (Section I could be read as Section 1 of the title you were just referencing, for example.)

Looking at the text of the bill, I see this same problem.

I'll be traveling today, but will give these some scrutiny tonight. Thank you for your patience.

Yeah, I thought they probably had been in there long enough. The abandoned thing was weird, but it's really just a bookkeeping thing and doesn't actually have any effect on anything.

Thank you!