[CRL] Immigration Reform (Antispam) Bill

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

As the Speech from the Throne said, the "require more detail in essays" provision seems to have flopped because they just plug something into ChatGPT that tells us what we want to hear. And "poking" prospectives to rewrite wasn't as successful as I've hoped. (I wonder whether you guys noticed that I've more or less stopped trying, lol.)

So I think there's just going to have to be a better screen, which I provisionally want to be a small (5-10?) multiple choice question test which can be answered by reading talossa.com.

And: I'm going to suggest a basic screen should be fill out your application in English or Talossan. Some AI is good and free, for example, Google Translate.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Bump. The recent AI hype has stiffened my resolve in this regard, but I have other things to do right now.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Right, so I'm thinking:

2.1 The Minister of Immigration shall ascertain to his own satisfaction, through correspondence or conversation, correspondence, conversation, or a simple comprehension test of material on the front pages of the Kingdom's online presence, that the prospective immigrant is a real human being with genuine interest in becoming a citizen of the Kingdom of Talossa. The Minister shall be free to inquire of the applicant on any and every subject, and shall be required to collect the legal name or name used in daily life, postal address (optional if the applicant is under 18 years of age, except for information needed to assign the applicant to a province), telephone number, and e-mail address(es) of the candidate, which information the Minister shall communicate to the Secretary of State. The applicant shall affirm or swear, under penalty of perjury and under the provisions of Lexh.A.16.1.[r 11], that this information is accurate, and shall provide documentary evidence of the same if the Minister thinks it appropriate.[399]

    2.2 Additionally, the Immigration Minister shall be required to collect an essay, written by the applicant, entitled "Why I am Interested in Becoming a Talossan." If the Immigration Minister considers that this essay misunderstands the nature of Talossa or the rights and duties of Talossan citizenship, or gives insufficient information to enable citizens to ask meaningful questions of the prospective, they may require the applicant to submit a rewritten essay before proceeding to the next stage. When doing so, the Immigration Minister shall provide the applicant with sufficient information to do so successfully, or indicate where to find such information.[400]

2.2. All Immigration applications shall be written in one of the national languages.

    2.3 The Immigration Minister shall also allow every applicant to indicate, whether in the essay described elsewhere in this section or otherwise, what part or parts of Talossan life are the Special Interests of the applicant. These may include Politics, Language, Culture, Heraldry, or any other categories as the Minister may see fit or that may be suggested by the applicant.[401]

    2.4 The Immigration Minister shall make a monthly report to the Ziu reporting the number of any immigration applications received in that month which did not proceed because failing to fulfil the requirements of this section. For each failed application the Minister shall note which part or part of the requirements of this section were lacking in the application.[402][402]

And delete the following:

7. The Secretary of State shall, on a date of his choosing, but within a period of ten days after receiving a petition from at least two citizens, neither of whom shall be the Minister of Immigration or anyone to whom they have delegated their powers, to issue a Grant of Citizenship as described in clause 4, and upon certification from the Ministry of Immigration that the prospective citizen has sufficient understanding of Talossan life and culture for full participation[412] determine the provincial assignment of the prospective immigrant and issue a Royal Grant of Citizenship to the immigrant. This Grant shall be issued under the Royal Seal, either as applied by the Chancery, or, should the Majesty request, by the Sovereign under his or her own hand. If requested by the Government, the Grant may also bear the signatures of the Seneschal[413] and/or Immigration Minister. The Royal Grant shall be promptly issued coincident with the candidate affirming his fealty to the Royal House and his allegiance to the Kingdom by taking any Oath of Talossan Citizenship specified by law. At the time this Royal Grant is issued, and from that point forward, the applicant shall be a full citizen of the Kingdom of Talossa. The fact of the issuance of this Grant shall be posted on Wittenberg by the Secretary of State, that the new citizen may be welcomed by his compatriots. Any and all objections raised to the immigration made after this Royal Grant will be moot.

... because it's pointless, I've never used it, and in retrospect is too prone to abuse.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

I don't see how this is going to improve our paltry immigration rate unfortunately.

[Mic’haglh Autófil, O.Be]

Right, so I'm thinking:

[.etc]

I think these all make sense if we're going to move to a test-based immigration certification.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

As the Speech from the Throne said, the "require more detail in essays" provision seems to have flopped because they just plug something into ChatGPT that tells us what we want to hear. And "poking" prospectives to rewrite wasn't as successful as I've hoped. (I wonder whether you guys noticed that I've more or less stopped trying, lol.)

I thought it would be bad form to belabour the point, but yes, I think the change hasn't helped at all.  Our immigration rate dropped down to zero both of the last two months.  Not desperate, yet, but definitely not a good sign.

Fundamentally, this is a problem in search of a solution.  We're making it much more work to process immigration applications to solve the problem of how much work it is to process immigration applications.

Make it easy.  It should be so easy to try to immigrate.  If you can apply and make an account, then that's enough labour.  If we're casting a wider net, we'll get more inactive citizens, but we'll also get more active ones.  Some people will be interested who might surprise us -- people with poor academic skills or poor English.  Cast a wide net: 20% of 100 is more than 50% of 20.

There's just no good reason to make it hard.  If they apply and say nothing, then people won't petition for them.  If they apply and totally lose interest, they'll eventually lose their citizenship.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

The logical outcome of this is just an automatic script which reposts every single immigration application on Wittenberg.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

I think probably some mild quality control makes sense, but I'm open to the idea.

[King Txec]

There have actually been many applications. If they chose not to interact, that is out of anyone's control.

-Txec R

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Yes, I agree that the attempt to ensure "higher quality" applicants has not succeeded, and there has been relatively little engagement.  We should cast a wider net.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

I am pushing forward at least with the removal of the compulsory essay question. Especially given recent research indicating that students who write their essays this way remember virtually nothing of what was "written" in their name, ChatGPT just makes stuff up. The purpose of the immigration essay was to ensure that the prospective was making an effort to learn about Talossa. Currently, it seems to do the opposite.

If prospectives want to let Spicy Autocorrect write essays full of hallucinations for then, fine, they can do it on Wittenberg once their applications go through, but "gatekeeping" via essay is now useless.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

WHEREAS there is a long and venerable tradition of applicants for Talossan citizenship being required to produce an essay along the lines of "What Talossa Means To Me", for fellow citizens to judge their character and bona fides;

AND WHEREAS recent advances in Large Language Model technologies such as ChatGPT now allow essays to be "autogenerated", without any thought on the part of the applicant;

AND WHEREAS, while even AI-generated essays may be informative, the current provision that requires an essay to be written as a form of "gatekeeping" is therefore no longer useful;

AND WHEREAS if applicants decide to post essays (even AI-generated) on Wittenberg after their application has been successful, it will be a better test of their real interest in becoming Talossan;

AND WHEREAS a more useful means to weeding out "spam" applicants will be requiring applications to be made in one of our national languages, and perhaps a very brief multiple-choice test on basic Talossan facts on the application form;

AND WHEREAS the requirement that the Immigration Minister sign off on prospectives' cultural competence has never been used, and it should be citizens which make that determination

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

1. El Lexhatx E.2, which currently reads:

2.1 The Minister of Immigration shall ascertain to his own satisfaction, through correspondence or conversation, that the prospective immigrant is a real human being with genuine interest in becoming a citizen of the Kingdom of Talossa. The Minister shall be free to inquire of the applicant on any and every subject, and shall be required to collect the legal name or name used in daily life, postal address (optional if the applicant is under 18 years of age, except for information needed to assign the applicant to a province), telephone number, and e-mail address(es) of the candidate, which information the Minister shall communicate to the Secretary of State. The applicant shall affirm or swear, under penalty of perjury and under the provisions of Lexh.A.16.1., that this information is accurate, and shall provide documentary evidence of the same if the Minister thinks it appropriate.

    2.2 Additionally, the Immigration Minister shall be required to collect an essay, written by the applicant, entitled "Why I am Interested in Becoming a Talossan." If the Immigration Minister considers that this essay misunderstands the nature of Talossa or the rights and duties of Talossan citizenship, or gives insufficient information to enable citizens to ask meaningful questions of the prospective, they may require the applicant to submit a rewritten essay before proceeding to the next stage. When doing so, the Immigration Minister shall provide the applicant with sufficient information to do so successfully, or indicate where to find such information.

    2.3 The Immigration Minister shall also allow every applicant to indicate, whether in the essay described elsewhere in this section or otherwise, what part or parts of Talossan life are the Special Interests of the applicant. These may include Politics, Language, Culture, Heraldry, or any other categories as the Minister may see fit or that may be suggested by the applicant.

    2.4 The Immigration Minister shall make a monthly report to the Ziu reporting the number of immigration applications received in that month which did not proceed because failing to fulfil the requirements of this section. For each failed application the Minister shall note which part or part of the requirements of this section were lacking in the application

shall be amended to read:

2.1 The Minister of Immigration shall ascertain to their own satisfaction, through correspondence, conversation, or a simple test of basic knowledge about Talossa, that the prospective immigrant is a real human being with genuine interest in becoming a citizen of the Kingdom of Talossa. The Minister shall be free to inquire of the applicant on any and every subject, and shall be required to collect the legal name or name used in daily life, postal address (optional if the applicant is under 18 years of age, except for information needed to assign the applicant to a province), telephone number, and e-mail address(es) of the candidate, which information the Minister shall communicate to the Secretary of State. The applicant shall affirm or swear, under penalty of perjury and under the provisions of Lexh.A.16.1., that this information is accurate, and shall provide documentary evidence of the same if the Minister thinks it appropriate.

2.2. All Immigration applications shall be written in one of the official languages of the Kingdom

2.3 The Immigration Minister shall also allow every applicant to indicate what part or parts of Talossan life are the Special Interests of the applicant. These may include Politics, Language, Culture, Heraldry, or any other categories as the Minister may see fit or that may be suggested by the applicant.

2.4 The Immigration Minister shall report, at least monthly, to the Ziu the number of any immigration applications received since the last report which did not proceed because failing to fulfil the requirements of this section. For each failed application the Minister shall note which part or part of the requirements of this section were lacking in the application.

2. El Lexhatx E.7, which currently reads:

7. The Secretary of State shall, on a date of his choosing, but within a period of ten days after receiving a petition from at least two citizens, neither of whom shall be the Minister of Immigration or anyone to whom they have delegated their powers, to issue a Grant of Citizenship as described in clause 4, and upon certification from the Ministry of Immigration that the prospective citizen has sufficient understanding of Talossan life and culture for full participation determine the provincial assignment of the prospective immigrant and issue a Royal Grant of Citizenship to the immigrant. This Grant shall be issued under the Royal Seal, either as applied by the Chancery, or, should the Majesty request, by the Sovereign under his or her own hand. If requested by the Government, the Grant may also bear the signatures of the Seneschal and/or Immigration Minister. The Royal Grant shall be promptly issued coincident with the candidate affirming his fealty to the Royal House and his allegiance to the Kingdom by taking any Oath of Talossan Citizenship specified by law. At the time this Royal Grant is issued, and from that point forward, the applicant shall be a full citizen of the Kingdom of Talossa. The fact of the issuance of this Grant shall be posted on Wittenberg by the Secretary of State, that the new citizen may be welcomed by his compatriots. Any and all objections raised to the immigration made after this Royal Grant will be moot.

shall 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". Subsections 7.1 through 7.12 shall remain in their current form.

Uréu q'estadra så: Miestră Schivă (MC-AVANT)

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Can we move this to CRL @Sir Lüc ?

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

@Baron Alexandreu Davinescu @Dr. Pôl dal Nordselvă @þerxh Sant-Enogat for your attention

[þerxh Sant-Enogat]

I would replace "2.2. All Immigration applications shall be written in one of the national languages." by "2.2. All Immigration applications shall be written in Talossan or in English.", as I am not sure that national languages are defined as such (see Article I Section 2 or 5 of the OrgLaw.)