[CRL] The Immigration Reform (Quality over Quantity) Bill

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

1) I actually worked with Ben Madison as Immigration Minister. He decided to keep me out, but he didn't do that through unaccountable backroom shenanigans. He did so by briefing against me with the Uppermost Cort, who had the final say. He wrote a snotty note in his newspaper saying that I could be reconsidered if I learned to toe the line, and of course I was already forming a new micronation by then, lol.

lol okay... so substitute in someone else you don't trust to play it straight.  The point is that you shouldn't put power like this in anyone's hands.

2) I could *already* be throwing half of the immigration applications in the bin and you'd know nothing about it, because you can't see the immigration mailbox.

Except that would be illegal.  You're proposing to make it legal for the MinImm to scrutinize every immigrant and secretly reject some of them based on their subjective assessment.

[King Txec]

I hope you noticed that I also identified the problem of "ImmMin getting too much gatekeeping authority", which is why I included the option of an appeal to the SoS.

This appears to be one of those new tasks, Txec. @Sir Txec dal Nordselvă, UrB I assume this came up in discussions?

I missed that, but my day job gets in the way sometimes. I'm really trying to stay out of political discussions, and probably shouldn't even have commented before.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

I hope you noticed that I also identified the problem of "ImmMin getting too much gatekeeping authority", which is why I included the option of an appeal to the SoS.

This appears to be one of those new tasks, Txec. @Sir Txec dal Nordselvă, UrB I assume this came up in discussions?

I missed that, but my day job gets in the way sometimes. I'm really trying to stay out of political discussions, and probably shouldn't even have commented before.

See, maybe now @Miestră Schivă, UrN understands my "Single Transferable Obsession." With reasonable takes like this you will soon have multiple transferable obsessions, Txec.

[King Txec]

It's late here and I have tired teacher brain @Breneir Tzaracomprada so I'm having trouble figuring out if your mad at me for commenting or complimenting me lol.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

It's late here and I have tired teacher brain @Breneir Tzaracomprada so I'm having trouble figuring out if your mad at me for commenting or complimenting me lol.

Txec, that was a compliment by reference to what I think Miestra intended as an insult when responding to a terpelaziun.  I hope you will get some rest.

[King Txec]

Gotcha. I'm sure I'll sleep well. Thank you.

[Sir Ian Plätschisch]

It's still really unclear to me why we'd want this bill.  The only benefit seems to be that it will be slightly easier for the MinImm, since they can reject some petitions.  But since they'll now be in charge of scrutinizing all of the essay portions and issuing directions as to their deficiency, it looks to me as though it would increase the workload.  The MinImm job would expand from "process applications" to "be the first judge of applicant worth and then process their applications," which is surely more labour.

Speaking out of my experience processing applications for a while, it takes longer than you would think just to copy the application from the email into Witt. Certainly it takes much longer than observing that someone has submitted a one-sentence essay and telling them to try harder. It can feel like an eternity when the application is so low-effort or lacking understanding of Talossa that you're 99.99% certain the application is going nowhere and that the effort of posting it is completely in vain.

The other side of this, as I mentioned above, is making it easier for Talossans to engage with immigrants that are actually serious. I must admit that I commented on one to many threads of immigrants that could not even be bothered to post once, and I kind of stopped engaging on immigration threads altogether because of it. Shame on me, I know.

To me, this legislation is not about making it more difficult for serious applicants to get through. It's about recognizing that processing blatantly unserious applications makes everyone involved a lot less motivated, which probably isn't a good thing.

Also, as pointed out, this would be an astonishing amount of power for a Government official to have.  The minister is evaluating the worth of an applicant in private, rejecting them based on their subjective assessment of the essay.  Even though I'm sure that this is well-meant, such a power could be abused with great ease.  Unless there's a very good reason, we shouldn't be giving anyone right of first refusal on new immigrants who successfully fulfill the process.

I'm not going to argue that such an abuse would be impossible, but I don't think it would be nearly significant enough to outweigh the practical benefits. Would it make you more comfortable if we tried defining objective criteria for what constitutes a "blatantly unserious" application?

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Speaking out of my experience processing applications for a while, it takes longer than you would think just to copy the application from the email into Witt. Certainly it takes much longer than observing that someone has submitted a one-sentence essay and telling them to try harder. It can feel like an eternity when the application is so low-effort or lacking understanding of Talossa that you're 99.99% certain the application is going nowhere and that the effort of posting it is completely in vain.

As mentioned, it will definitely be much more work to subjectively scrutinize each applicant, approve and post some, reject some others, and then explain the deficiencies to those who are rejected.

I have some sympathy for the idea that it could be an easier process in some ways, but isn't that more an argument for fixing the process?  That would solve the problem that's been identified, without the risk of making a government minister the new Judge of All Essays.

I mean, right now the process is just a website form that generates emails.  I think it would not be too hard to tweak it so that it spat out something that was ready-to-post, also.  Then it's just CTRL+C, CTRL+V.

To me, this legislation is not about making it more difficult for serious applicants to get through. It's about recognizing that processing blatantly unserious applications makes everyone involved a lot less motivated, which probably isn't a good thing.

This makes sense.  Maybe if we're going to do this, it makes sense to just do it in the open?  Create a new immigration program -- maybe call it a visa -- which takes notice of those prospectives who have put extra care into their essays?

The Ministry of Immigration has identified this prospective immigrant as particularly energetic and interested in immigrating, and has added them to the RF-1 Visa Program

I'm not going to argue that such an abuse would be impossible, but I don't think it would be nearly significant enough to outweigh the practical benefits. Would it make you more comfortable if we tried defining objective criteria for what constitutes a "blatantly unserious" application?

The proposed law says that the standard right now isn't "blatantly unserious."  Instead, it's the far scarier: "If the Immigration Minister considers that this essay shows an insufficient understanding of what Talossa is."

It would be better to discard this law, since it seems like a solution in search of a problem.  The real motive here is just to make it harder to immigrate.  If the problem of ministerial workload is so bad, then the solution can't be to add on more work.  Fix the actual problems, instead. 

But yes, if it's absolutely necessary to do this, then you guys should at least establish some more objective standards.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

Speaking out of my experience processing applications for a while, it takes longer than you would think just to copy the application from the email into Witt. Certainly it takes much longer than observing that someone has submitted a one-sentence essay and telling them to try harder. It can feel like an eternity when the application is so low-effort or lacking understanding of Talossa that you're 99.99% certain the application is going nowhere and that the effort of posting it is completely in vain.

As mentioned, it will definitely be much more work to subjectively scrutinize each applicant, approve and post some, reject some others, and then explain the deficiencies to those who are rejected.

I have some sympathy for the idea that it could be an easier process in some ways, but isn't that more an argument for fixing the process?  That would solve the problem that's been identified, without the risk of making a government minister the new Judge of All Essays.

I mean, right now the process is just a website form that generates emails.  I think it would not be too hard to tweak it so that it spat out something that was ready-to-post, also.  Then it's just CTRL+C, CTRL+V.

To me, this legislation is not about making it more difficult for serious applicants to get through. It's about recognizing that processing blatantly unserious applications makes everyone involved a lot less motivated, which probably isn't a good thing.

This makes sense.  Maybe if we're going to do this, it makes sense to just do it in the open?  Create a new immigration program -- maybe call it a visa -- which takes notice of those prospectives who have put extra care into their essays?

The Ministry of Immigration has identified this prospective immigrant as particularly energetic and interested in immigrating, and has added them to the RF-1 Visa Program

I'm not going to argue that such an abuse would be impossible, but I don't think it would be nearly significant enough to outweigh the practical benefits. Would it make you more comfortable if we tried defining objective criteria for what constitutes a "blatantly unserious" application?

The proposed law says that the standard right now isn't "blatantly unserious."  Instead, it's the far scarier: "If the Immigration Minister considers that this essay shows an insufficient understanding of what Talossa is."

It would be better to discard this law, since it seems like a solution in search of a problem.  The real motive here is just to make it harder to immigrate.  If the problem of ministerial workload is so bad, then the solution can't be to add on more work.  Fix the actual problems, instead. 

But yes, if it's absolutely necessary to do this, then you guys should at least establish some more objective standards.

Things have quieted down but my two bence. The Baron's idea is a really good one here.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

Thanks for everyone's comments.

Upon discussion within the Cabinet, we have decided to change the wording slightly as so:

If the Immigration Minister considers that this essay shows an insufficient understanding of what Talossa is or interest in Talossa and what Talossan citizenship entails, they may require the applicant to submit a rewritten essay that shows such understanding or interest before proceeding to the next stage.

I understand citizens' worries that Immigration staff with a chip on their shoulder could simply "flush" applications that they don't like the looks of. But this is the case already. El Lexh E.2. as written says that Immigration are entitled to reject applications if they don't consider the prospective to have furnished sufficient proof of identity. As we have seen with that clown who called himself a Lord and tried to immigrate a second time after being rejected a first time, this is somewhat toothless unless Immigration has the confidence to look more closely, and not the presumption that we "let everyone in and let the people decide".

The text of this amendment not only gives Immigration more confidence to actually enforce Immigration law as currently written, it gives precise instructions as to how Immigration are supposed to counsel prospectives to find out more about Talossa and to write an essay which not only demonstrates they know what Talossa is, but gives citizens vital information in order to ask intelligent questions of them in the immigration process.

Thus, I call upon the CRL being @Ian Plätschisch , @Glüc da Dhi S.H. and @þerxh Sant-Enogat , to take up this bill (text as in the first post in this thread) with a view to getting it on the next Clark.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

I think the changes improve the bill, marginally, but it yet remains a problem that it wouldn't accomplish its own stated goals and it would make it much harder to immigrate without clear benefit.

I understand citizens' worries that Immigration staff with a chip on their shoulder could simply "flush" applications that they don't like the looks of. But this is the case already. El Lexh E.2. as written says that Immigration are entitled to reject applications if they don't consider the prospective to have furnished sufficient proof of identity.

Your proposal would change the current standard for the minister to process an application from an administrative one to an ideological one.  There's a yawning gulf between "they didn't prove their identity" and "they don't understand enough about the country to meet my standards."

I think you're probably going to go ahead with this no matter what, but you guys should be aware that this appears horribly corrupt.  I'm sure intentions are good and current personnel won't abuse this power, but it's crazy to say that one person gets to secretly decide which citizens meet their subjective standards of knowledge and writing.

This is especially true when there's no reasonable defense of the proposal. 

• It takes too long to process applications?  Okay, well, this would make it take longer.
• We need a way to keep track of which applications deserve more scrutiny?  Why not point them out in public, rather than gatekeep in secret?
• We need more serious immigrants?  Well, rejecting some serious applicants who might not write well in English due to their educational background, their location, or a disability like dyslexia is not going to help!

Making the minister into the Secret Judge will take more time, it's wide-open for corruption, and it will discriminate against some types of immigrants.  If the Free Democrats shove this through, ignoring the red flags, then they will deserve it when voters are upset about it.

[Sir Ian Plätschisch]

I think you're probably going to go ahead with this no matter what, but you guys should be aware that this appears horribly corrupt.  I'm sure intentions are good and current personnel won't abuse this power, but it's crazy to say that one person gets to secretly decide which citizens meet their subjective standards of knowledge and writing

...

Making the minister into the Secret Judge will take more time, it's wide-open for corruption, and it will discriminate against some types of immigrants.  If the Free Democrats shove this through, ignoring the red flags, then they will deserve it when voters are upset about it.

The claims of corruption and discrimination only make sense if you assume the absolute worst motives of the official, which, while I agree doing so would be appropriate if we were determining policy for another country, just doesn't seem necessary in today's Talossa. Again, I'm not saying such a thing is inconceivable, but seriously. I'm not here to design laws that pretend we have a much greater need for anti-corruption measures than we actually do. The possibility of this comment itself being used as evidence of corruption is not lost on me, but I stand by it.

Also, in the imagined "worst case scenario" of immigration Minister, there would be nothing stopping them from secretly throwing out applications under current law. This bill wouldn't give them any legal cover since, if they reject an application, they are required to provide advice on making it better. However, I don't believe this will add any more net workload because most applications will likely either:
- Be accepted as they are now on the first try, or
- Be rejected without any follow-up attempt, saving the Minister the time of posting the application and saving everyone else the time of evaluating it.

The bill only appears horribly corrupt to those that have a vested interest in it appearing so. Hey, I guess the opposition needs something to run on next time and it may as well be this.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN]

I mean, it may well be that "the Government changed Immigration laws so it could exclude perfectly good citizens for reasons of corruption" might motivate a big voting bloc at the next election. Alternatively, we could be about to see a golden age where every new citizen is an informed and active one, and the voters would love that.

But all this is entirely hypothetical because right now there hasn't been an immigration application in almost two months, which is unfortunate but not something this bill is meant to deal with. Other government action will deal with that, schi Allà en volt.

[Tric'hard Lenxheir]

So what you are saying is that only prospective citizens who are intelligent enough to write an essay are capable of becoming useful active citizens?

[Sir Ian Plätschisch]

So what you are saying is that only prospective citizens who are intelligent enough to write an essay are capable of becoming useful active citizens?

No