Statement on "negative attacks"

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

At absolute best, the Most Honourable Seneschal is confused about events.  Thankfully, the thread is right here.

Original Context
I wrote and posted my simple bill on August 12th.  At that time, there had been zero immigration for four months.  Literally, zero.  We hadn't yet lucked out with the Tiktok video or magazine article of last month.

The Process
MC Somelieir objected to one of the introductory clauses, since I said the bill was to resolve a legal ambiguity.  She said that I wasn't allowed to say that.  We argued about it briefly, but I decided that it wasn't important and just deleted the entire clause to which she objected.

Then the Most Honourable Seneschal posted what she calls a "snide comment," saying "I do think that E.5 probably is a bit wider in scope than appropriate. And the Government would be willing to discuss softening it - if we weren't having these discussions with an individual whose whole political 'shtick' right now is angry condemnation that the Government isn't jumping and hollering and doing political theatre around immigration."

Then when I Clarked it, she has already confessed to lobbying her party to vote against it.  And so it failed to pass.

The Motivation
Please notice that I am directly recounting and often quoting from the public record about this, whereas the Most Honourable Seneschal feels free to be a little more creative.

That's also why she says, over and over again, that she's afraid she's going to be prosecuted.  At this point, this has to be called what it is... a falsehood.  She's lying.  She knows that I have repeatedly told her that's outright impossible.  But it's a more sympathetic story than killing a necessary bill just because you don't like the sponsor.

The Most Honourable Seneschal feels caught out on a deeply unpopular decision, knows that there will be a reckoning with the voters, and she's looking for an excuse to explain it.  But there's no excuse that holds water, folks.  There's no good explanation for the Government demanding the power to secretly control immigration.  There's no good explanation for lying about it.

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Riddle me this, Batman:

- if the PA admits that they have no evidence that I'm not throwing immigration apps in the trash, and that they don't even think I'm doing it;
- and that I'm going to be immigration minister at least until December 1;

then: why was reforming this law last month such an urgent priority that people would flip parties over it?

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

I was honestly very surprised that the URL voted down The Public Process Act.  Here's a power that you have admitted many times you think is excessive, and a simple bill which would fix it to require transparency in the process.

I guess my thinking was like this:

STEP ONE
"Hey, an egregious violation of our civil liberties and basic good governance.  Let's fix it!"

STEP TWO
"Wait, the URL is voting against the bill... they want to keep the power to secretly control immigration?  I should try to get public support for the bill, so they don't kill it."

STEP THREE
"Well, I guess the URL has taken a position in favor of secret government control over immigration, so we'd better campaign on that and get the votes to fix this... since they just showed everyone their position."

And that's where we're at now.  I think that if you didn't want your party to take this position, you probably shouldn't have lobbied for it so hard.  You stuck them with this, and now you won't let them move on to a more positive subject.

Maybe we can move on and discuss some other topic?  Like we could talk about some policy plans for the next term?

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

You did not answer my question.

This saga has a few points which go to the question of your personal fitness to be Seneschal:

• The original intemperate comments - including accusations of corrupt interference in the immigration process of that Malawian fellow - which sapped my interest in engaging with you at all.
• The unwillingness to consult with other parties over the (howsoever well-intentioned but) flawed bill. This attitude that "silence = consent" is what the Distáin was criticised for over the Fixed Terms amendment.
• The opportunistic panic-mongering that a loophole which you know I hadn't used and wasn't intending to was such an urgent priority as to make a central election issue.

That's not to deny my own responsibility. I made a political blunder in that I thought if I deprived your increasingly shrill accusations of the oxygen of my attention, no-one else would pay attention either. Clearly I was wrong, and you've made great political hay out of it. Well done.

As I keep saying to the Sex Pest, I beg you to understand that your behaviour has consequences on how other people engage with you.

[Mic’haglh Autófil, O.Be]

The problem with "Step Three" as listed above is that it completely ignores the Immigration Process Reform Act, which I myself currently have in the Hopper and will be continuing to refine with feedback from the community once the new Cosa is seated.

One of the central tenets of the bill — one I am more adamant on proceeding with — is that the review of immigration applications is handled by a committee of at least three, as opposed to the unilateral, "secret" discretion of the Immigration Minister. In other words, it neutralizes the same concerns to Public Process Act claims to address.

Additionally, one of the committee members must be nominated by the Opposition — meaning that the workings of the Ministry will be known to the very people intended to keep the Government accountable. This also serves to better balance the committee politically, assuaging concerns about political bias affecting immigration applications.

One of the big advantages in the committee method under the IPRA as compared to the Public Process Act is that the committee approach still increases transparency and Ziu oversight of the immigration process, without subjecting the Ministry's day-to-day operations to Ziu micromanagement. There is a difference between the two.

To claim that a government run by the person who put this committee approach forward (me) would somehow be more secretive is a level of dishonesty bordering on the comical.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Good point. IMHO Mic'haglh's proposal has all the positive features of 61RZ27 without the potentially dangerous loopholes/make-work for Immigration Minister.

What say you, Baron?

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

First of all, I am glad that we're turning towards a positive discussion of solutions!  The current situation is intolerable, and even if it took this much pressure to make it happen, it's still a good thing to turn our attention towards solutions!

It is fundamentally a terrible idea to allow the government to secretly control immigration, so we need to fix it!

Now, on the bill.  I'm a little surprised to see you bring it up... that bill was posted in September, and within the day, I pointed out some fairly serious problems with it.  And then... nothing.  No response, and here we are in November.

Now that it's a priority, I think my objections from September still need to be addressed.  Here's what I wrote back then, and which you never responded to:

I appreciate the thought and care behind this bill!  It is drafted with great exactness.  I also appreciate your openness to feedback.  I think there's some merit here, but I'd also like to hear more about some aspects.

A couple of immediate notes:

• A lot of this bill isn't strictly necessary, if the Government wants to try this.  The MinImm could establish a Comità del Veitariçaziun today.  Indeed, whatever happens to the bill and regardless of what the peanut gallery thinks, the Government should probably do this immediately if they feel it's a good idea.
• This bill seems like it would establish a third category of ministers, called staff, who are neither deputies nor permanent secretaries.  This doesn't seem like a good idea, and I'd suggest incorporating this into the existing system instead, if possible.
• While I think I understand the rationale for expanding the petition time, it also seems like it's going to be frustrating for eager new immigrants to wait a full month to start participating.  Is this the best way to stop people from feeling adrift once they migrate?  This is the change that is most likely to have the biggest impact.
• The part I don't feel like I understand the rationale for is the need for the clerks and so on.  Can you speak to why you think this is better than just the minister being transparent in public about the process?  As I understand it, if the minister processes every application and announces when they're declining to do so, then we're already maximally transparent (short of automating the process and taking the human element out, which would be a mistake).  What's the advantage of a new bureaucracy here?

So there you have it.  There are some pretty big hurdles here.

1.  First of all, it should probably be pointed out that the problems with The Public Process Act are imaginary, lol.  The law still says very clearly that an incomplete or deficient application can be returned to the applicant with an explanation, and that disclosure to the Ziu would only be required if a complete application was discarded.  And of course, the fear of prosecution is entirely fictional.

But hey, I'm flexible: why not just amend my bill to include a clause saying explicitly that it's not grounds for prosecution or making anything illegal ex post facto (already impossible, of course, but no matter), and another clause saying explicitly that disclosure doesn't apply for incomplete/nonsense applications?  I'll draft up the changes tonight, and we can pass that bill immediately while we work on what you call "very much a draft?"

2.  But anyway: I note that this bill doesn't actually provide government transparency!  I guess it's good that the Opposition would get to appoint one of the bureaucrats who were part of the secret decision-making, but it's not actual government transparency.  I think it's a pretty simple proposition: if the people in our government are secretly blocking applications, I think that the people should know about it!  And that's true even if the bureaucrats are bipartisan.

3.  Speaking of bureaucrats... why exactly would we want to create a new bureaucracy?  One of our planks in this campaign is to cut red tape and eliminate bureaucracy... this seems really counterproductive.  I'm not adamantly opposed, but "let's make a new bureaucracy" seems like a pretty drastic thing to do.

4.  And of course, it has to be pointed out that you guys could have done this back in September if you thought it was a good idea.  You don't need legislation to do this... this very night you could announce two new deputy positions, one of which would be nominated by the Opposition, and let them in on the secret process.  Before we make it mandatory in law, in fact, it seems like you'd want to try it!

All of that being said, I'd love to keep working on this and try to work out the kinks.

[Mic’haglh Autófil, O.Be]

Now, on the bill.  I'm a little surprised to see you bring it up... that bill was posted in September, and within the day, I pointed out some fairly serious problems with it.  And then... nothing.  No response, and here we are in November.

I was waiting for someone I can trust to engage in good faith. I still am. I do however find it very amusing that you can simply claim "well your bill has a bunch of problems with it, but mine is perfectly fine!" Like a political party containing the furthest-right politicians in the country claiming to be Progressive, it's an entire electoral campaign built on the concept of "source: just trust me bro!"

However, to correct your criticisms, I would point out that "this bill is unnecessary, the Immigration Ministry could just create the committee now" does nothing to address that simply creating the committee ad-hoc does nothing to take away the legal powers that are vested very much in the Immigration Minister alone. You have to change the law if you want to do that. And to head off your counterargument: yes, the Immigration Minister could simply agree to abide by the committee's wishes, but that's still solely on an honor system and therefore no better than the current situation.

As for the assertion that the committee approach "doesn't actually provide government transparency" -- do you honestly mean to tell me that if you were the Opposition member of the committee, and you were therefore able to witness a hypothetical situation where the Government secretly blocked or discarded an application, you would...simply sit on it? You wouldn't shriek to high heaven about alleged government malfeasance, the same way you do whenever the government does anything without your say-so? None of the standard  theatrics or hyperventilation, nothing? Because after your behavior this last term, I find that hard to believe. Actively including the Opposition in the process allows the Opposition to fulfill its most basic and important duty more effectively: namely, the duty to hold the Government to account. The fact that I need to explain the role of the Opposition in our constitutional order to the person who currently leads it is gravely concerning.

If you were actually concerned about inordinate amounts of power being vested in a single role, you would agree that the best and most effective solution would be to dilute that power among multiple individuals. There are at least two reasons I can think of off the top of my head to believe that you are not actually concerned:

One, part of your platform explicitly calls for concentrating roles and power in the hands of a small number of individuals, and this explicitly runs counter to that.

Two, there is no reason to believe your stances on any issue are taken for any reason other than to use as a cudgel against your opponents. For example, this is why you've changed your tack on immigration at least three times in the last six months, or why you don't believe in devoting a mailer to warn unaware citizens (the ones who never visit Witt) of the dangers of electorally validating S:reu Tzaracomprada -- the only calculation that matters to you is "how can I use [thing] for electoral success".

While I am glad to see that you are at least claiming to abandon your plan to bring lawfare to Talossa, one of the other massive flaws with 61RZ27 that we haven't even addressed yet is that it involves the Chancery, which is a poor plan for at least three reasons:
- From a practical standpoint, the Chancery has enough of a workload as it is.
- This act would require the Chancery to render a decision on whether or not the Government has broken the law, a decision process best left to the judiciary (surely the Clerk of Corts remembers the judiciary?)
- Requiring this decision from the Chancery could open the Secretary of State to baseless accusations of favoritism, something we have seen for other reasons in recent years.

It's pretty obvious that in this case, creating a bit more bureaucracy is preferable to simply stacking more on the desk of the existing positions.

we can pass that bill immediately while we work on what you call "very much a draft?"

"Just give us what we want and trust us to give you want you want later!" Yeah, no.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

I'm going to try to ignore the ton of personal, mean attacks on my character here.  I guess you guys have a brand, and you need to keep to it.

And I also guess I'm happy about the contrast, even though it's not a lot of fun to read right now.

I would point out that "this bill is unnecessary, the Immigration Ministry could just create the committee now" does nothing to address that simply creating the committee ad-hoc does nothing to take away the legal powers that are vested very much in the Immigration Minister alone. You have to change the law if you want to do that. And to head off your counterargument: yes, the Immigration Minister could simply agree to abide by the committee's wishes, but that's still solely on an honor system and therefore no better than the current situation.

Well, the reason you've given for maintaining the government secrecy around immigration control in your plan is that there'd be someone nominated by the Opposition involved.  That's like... the main thing.  You guys could do that tonight.  If you think this is a good idea, why don't you?

Yes, it wouldn't be required by law, but isn't it preferable to try it before you make it legally mandatory?

If you were actually concerned about inordinate amounts of power being vested in a single role, you would agree that the best and most effective solution would be to dilute that power among multiple individuals.

I think probably the best and most effective solution to making the immigration process transparent is to make it transparent, not to just let more officials in on the secret.

one of the other massive flaws with 61RZ27 that we haven't even addressed yet is that it involves the Chancery,

...what?  That's the current law.

I know it might be surprising, but The Public Process Act only adds one small provision... the one requiring the government to disclose when it has blocked someone's immigration application.  Otherwise it's not really changing much of anything.

Don't just take my word for it... here's my bill and here's the current law.

Oof...

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

Alexandreu, like I say to Breneir, I beg you to consider the role in which your (collective; the PA's) own behaviour makes the people trying to compete/negotiate with you so frustrated. If you actually want a cross-party consensus that can actually pass during the next Cosa, the right reaction to a positive attempt from us to meet your concerns is not to run off to your party board to declare victory and pat each other on the back.

If you *were* acting in bad faith, not interested in solving a real problem but just in "creating stories" to throw red meat to the base, JD Vance-style, how would you behave differently?

[Mic’haglh Autófil, O.Be]

I'm going to try to ignore the ton of personal, mean attacks on my character here.

Truths may hurt, but the only way to truly avoid them is to earn better truths. I don't give honest criticism with the intent to be mean, I give it to offer chances for self-improvement.

Well, the reason you've given for maintaining the government secrecy around immigration control in your plan is that there'd be someone nominated by the Opposition involved.  That's like... the main thing.  You guys could do that tonight.  If you think this is a good idea, why don't you?

This bill does the literal opposite of maintain secrecy, which means you're just going to either ignore everything I've written, or just claim I wrote the opposite.

Yes, it wouldn't be required by law, but isn't it preferable to try it before you make it legally mandatory?

We're already trying the "honor system" version of things. You yourself don't seem to think it's working, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation to begin with. Evidently then, we have crossed into where it becomes legally mandatory.

I think probably the best and most effective solution to making the immigration process transparent is to make it transparent, not to just let more officials in on the secret.

Again -- what motivation would the Opposition have to "keep things secret"?

Your criticism of the current system, if taken at face value, stems from two (well, two-and-a-half) issues:
- One, that the Immigration Minister could discard immigration applications without first informing the public
- Two, as per the preamble to 61RZ27, that a future Immigration Minister could abuse their power to unilaterally discard immigration applications based on the perceived views of the applicant (political, religious, etc)
- Two and a half, the country would be none the wiser for this bias as a result of (One).

Now, both the Public Process Act and the Immigration Process Reform Act address the first concern, albeit in different manners. The Public Process Act simply says "the Minister has to tell everybody before they junk an application", which sounds nice in theory, but unfortunately non-compliance is hard to detect -- if they don't post it to begin with, there's no way for the public to know that there was an application to discard in the frst place, which leads us right back to...basically where we are now. The IPRA on the other hand addresses this by placing more eyeballs in the room, and at least one set of those eyeballs has every incentive imaginable to blow the whistle and alert the public if they see something sketchy.

Where they differ is that the IPRA goes further by dividing the Immigration Minister's power among those same "sets of eyeballs", which does a lot to make situation (Two) less likely in the first place. It attacks the issue from both ends, making for a more effective solution.

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

Mic'haglh, slow your roll for a second.  You wrote a whole bulleted list about how outrageous it was that The Public Process Act would put more work on the Chancery.  But it doesn't -- that's the current process, and you made a significant mistake when you were reading the bill.

So do you think it's maybe possible you're also mistaken in other areas of this discussion?  I know that right now you're going attack attack attack, but it is worth maybe slowing down and taking another look?

Just think about it, okay?

We're already trying the "honor system" version of things.

So let's think through it.  As I understand your bill, the main protection against a corrupt government bureaucrat secretly discarding applications is that the Opposition would appoint their own government bureaucrat as well, and they'd keep an eye on each other.

We're not doing that right now, agreed?  But if you think this is a good idea, you could do it today.

So why not do it?  Either it's a good idea, or it's not.

Again -- what motivation would the Opposition have to "keep things secret"?

I don't want government bureaucrats to have the power to secretly control immigration, even if one of those bureaucrats is chosen by another political party.

I think we should instead just opt for transparency.  And since I'm already skeptical of a plan that requires creating a whole new bureaucracy, I don't know why we'd choose that route instead, just to keep the process secret.  Why is "keep it secret" even a goal?  The people deserve to know.

I mean... what are we trying to hide?

WThe Public Process Act simply says "the Minister has to tell everybody before they junk an application", which sounds nice in theory, but unfortunately non-compliance is hard to detect

This is a fair point!  I thought about this, but if my bill passed, the minister couldn't legally just delete an application -- they'd be committing a crime.  That's a very different thing from the current system, where they might not be proud of doing something unethical, but they know it's legal (shockingly so).

It seems pretty easy to fix as a practical matter, if you're really worried about this.  I mean, we can just mirror the application emails to another email address that only the Avocat-Xheneral or someone else can access.  Or even a justice on the cort.

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

Just for my own understanding. How is your idea of mirroring application emails to the A-Xh (who would be a cabinet member and part of the governing coalition) any more transparent than doing the same but with someone appointed by HM Opposition (not just "another political party" but specifically the Opposition)? The A-Xh might even have an incentive not to publicise corrupt behaviour by fellow coalitioners, whereas an Opposition appointee would have every incentive to publicise such behaviour. What am I missing here?

Similarly, since in the current set-up the MinImm has no obligation to share new applications with anyone, even if the Opposition were to appoint an immigration inspector right now, the MinImm could just as well delete applications, tell the appointee that no applications came in, and the rest of us would be none the wiser (as there is neither an obligation to be transparent nor any mechanism to ensure that the Opposition gets notified of new applications unadulterated). If a MinImm is already inclined to withhold or delete applications, they would have no additional ethical dilemma about withholding information that they are not legally and mechanically obligated to share. So in the end implementing this idea without legal enforceability would rely on the honour system again. What am I missing here also?

[Baron Alexandreu Davinescu]

How is your idea of mirroring application emails to the A-Xh (who would be a cabinet member and part of the governing coalition) any more transparent than doing the same but with someone appointed by HM Opposition

Yeah, that's a great point!  I'd suggest that my other suggested option of a justice would be the better choice.  I think the A-X is typically going to be fairly unlikely to abet a crime, but a justice would be much more unlikely.  Or even an email account they can all access.