The Trapped Dandelions Act

[Lüc da Schir]

WHEREAS, our citizenship rolls presently have a number of "trapped Dandelions" - Dandelions whose parents lost their Talossan citizenship;

WHEREAS, said "trapped Dandelions" may not even be aware of Talossa's existence, and of their right to claim citizenship when they are 14;

WHEREAS, we often have no records about "trapped Dandelions", no means of contacting them and no proof of their existence or age;

WHEREAS, the presence of "trapped Dandelions" needlessly inflates the number of active citizens in the rolls of the Chancery;

WHEREAS, the process of acquiring Talossan citizenship is normally painless, for any former "trapped Dandelion" who would be interested in doing so;

THEREFORE, section 13 of Title E of El Lexhatx is hereby amended to read:

13. Any minor child or ward of a Talossan citizen shall be made a citizen on simple application of the Talossan parent or guardian. Such application shall be made to the Secretary of State and shall affirm that any non-Talossan parent or legal guardian of the minor child (according to and under any jurisdiction of the world) accedes to said citizenship.
The said minor child shall be made a citizen of the province to which the parent making the described application clings. Said child shall be entitled to be known as a Broad-Leaf Dandelion, and shall on reaching the age of 14 become a voting citizen according to the terms of Article XVIII, Section 7 of the Organic Law.

13.1. Explicit renunciation of Talossan citizenship made by a parent or legal guardian on behalf of a citizen not yet 14 years old shall be considered as the renunciation of the young citizen himself; but no such renunciation will be recognized that is not made explicitly and publicly and in the name of the young citizen.

13.2. Any citizen who reaches the age of 14 and fails to register and vote shall fall under the provisions of Article XVIII.10 of the Organic Law; but his or her immediate failure to register will not otherwise be taken as a renunciation of citizenship.

13.3. Should a citizen who is either a natural born Dandelion or Broad-Leaf Dandelion as defined by law, and is under the age of 14 or whose current age is unknown, have no parents or legal guardians who hold Talossan citizenship, he or she shall lose his or her status as a Dandelion or Broad-Leaf Dandelion, and automatically lose his or her citizenship.

Ureu q'estadra sa,

Lüc da Schir (Senator-BE)

[Lüc da Schir]

It has arisen in recent private conversations that we have, I think, seven Dandelions who are "trapped" in our rolls - their Talossan parents have lost their citizenship, so we don't know anything about when they could become full citizens, and we have no means of contacting them. They are in legal limbo, since we can't purge them right now, and we don't know how old are they (so we should wait until ~2030 to be sure we can remove them as per current E.13.1). The new E.13.3 takes care of that.

Also, I shuffled E.13, E.13.1 and E.13.2 since the order didn't make sense and wasn't very readable.

[Lüc da Schir]

Now that we're closer to the beginning of the First Clark, I'd like to announce that I'm going to Clark this bill. Any thoughts on the content are very welcome.

[Glüc da Dhi]

This would certainly be preferable over the status quo.

I wonder if a better alternative solution might be to automatically remove all dandelions who have had that status for more than 16 years following an election. The downside might be a little more administration and dandelions being "trapped" longer, but the upside is that this also deals with other dandelions of unknown age who do have Talossan parents, just not very active ones, and who we know should have been removed at some point based on XVIII.10 but not when. Also, and I really hope this never happens, but suppose someone at some point is raised in the understanding that they will be Talossan later, but then the worst happens and they lose their Talossan parent. Talossa might be the last thing on their mind under such circumstances but still a bit harsh to immediately remove them from the rolls.

Just a suggestion though. I would also be fine with the current proposal.

[Lüc da Schir]

Both fair points. I would be inclined to add your first suggestion as an alternate, "catch-all", default provision, rather than replacing as a whole my own proposal.

As per your second point, I was thinking to maybe add a grace period of X>=1 years, starting from the moment a Dandelion would lose his/her status, in which the Dandelion could somehow make an announcement that he/she still wished to turn into a full citizen... but nah, that's unnecessarily complicated, presumes that the Dandelion knows about Talossa and can contact officials, and so on.

We could add a provision to let the Chancery/MinImm make a judgement call to freeze the strike, but - as much as it would be sad to strike a Dandelion on the death of his/her parents - going through the normal immigration process is hardly an issue.