Let's Chat #5: Can We Control Immigration & Prevent PTOs?
Day 2,171, 04:40
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Published in United Kingdom 
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by
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by Jimbobfrey
Immigration has always been a popular issue on eRepublik, especially in smaller countries.
Each member of Congress (Parliament/Senate) can accept 3 foreign requests for citizenship. Once they have citizenship, they can take part in Congress, Party President (PP) and CP elections.
Many smaller countries (like Belgium, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Philippines, etc.) regularly risk Political Takeovers (PTOs) from foreigners who want to steal money from their national treasury. Basically, a person known as a PTOer (PTOers pretty much always target foreign countries, I should add) gets their citizenship request approved and they join the country. Then, the PTOer takes part in the Congress elections and they get a seat in Congress. This allows the PTOer to invite 3 more PTOers into the country. Over time, more and more PTOers are allowed into the country. Once there are enough of them, one of them runs in the CP elections. The other PTOers can all vote for them to win. Unfortunately, they can also vote for each other in the Congress elections too so they are able to have a majority in Congress as well as the CP’s powers. This gives them the ability to donate money from the treasury to their own personal accounts.
Obviously, PTOs are not exactly ideal for the citizens who are already in that country! This is the main danger of immigration. But is there a way of controlling immigration? Is there anything that could prevent a PTO from ever happening? That’s what I want to chat with you about in this article...
To control immigration, there needs to be a system which is something like the one that (I believe) is currently being used in Spain:
1) A foreigner applies for citizenship
2) A Congressman sends them a message with some questions about why they want to enter the country, what they want to do, their history, etc.
3) The foreigner answers the questions
4) Either an individual or a group of people must decide whether or not to approve the foreigner’s citizenship request based on what they know about this person
5) If the foreigner is approved, a Congressman can then click on the ‘accept’ button on the citizenship request screen. If the foreigner is not approved, nothing happens and they must wait for the citizenship request to reach its expiry date
This system is actually quite robust. However, I’m sure you can see the fundamental problem with it… what if the Congressmen don’t listen and just do what they want? Well, in an ideal world, there would be an incentive for Congressmen to stick to the immigration system.
When someone gets their citizenship request approved by a Congressman, the name of the Congressman who accepted them is publicly visible from this screen.
So anyone can keep track of who’s been allowed into the country and also who has been allowing them in. So, if a Congressman has chosen to ignore the system, they can be spotted!
One way to try and stop Congressmen ignoring the system is to create some sort of ‘blacklist’, declaring who has illegally let people into the country. It’s like a way of naming and shaming people - except, that might not be enough to get them to listen. Especially if there are a lot of them. I remember the eUK trying this a couple of months ago but it wasn’t particularly effective.
So, another way is to persuade PPs to help enforce punishment. Each PP could be informed of which of their party’s Congressmen have been breaking the rules. Then, the PP has the power to stop them getting a seat in Congress.
Again, you can see the big gaping hole in this (that’s not what she said). If the PPs don’t listen, then there is little anyone can do to enforce an immigration system. Also, the PPs change each month so there are no long-term guarantees that any party would support the system. So, yeah, it’s hard to enforce anything in Congress.
The best incentive would probably be money or supplies. For those who obey the immigration system, a small cash reward would be a good idea. The trouble is getting that money and giving all Congressmen an equal chance of being able to earn this money. But it could work and it could work quite well indeed…
Like I mentioned earlier, the main danger of unrestricted immigration is the threat of PTOs, especially to smaller countries which are the most vulnerable ones. So, since it would be hard to control immigration, perhaps it is possible to have no immigration system but just to focus on preventing PTOers from taking over the country.
On eRepublik, this idea is often referred to as an Anti-Takeover (ATO) movement. It’s quite simple - using egov, each party’s membership can be monitored on a weekly or monthly basis. Then, a list can be made of people who may be PTOers. But anyone could be a PTOer! What do they commonly look like? Well, let me explain some things to look out for:
Rapidly Increasing Membership - if a party suddenly gets a lot of new members in a short space of time, it could be that their recruitment is working successfully. If, however, they’re not actually trying to recruit or they’re suddenly moving from being a small party to one of the largest, then they’re probably about to be taken over.
New Accounts - watch out for new accounts joining parties. It’s great to have new players join eRepublik but some of these people might be multiple accounts (multies) or players who are not really new but an old PTOer under a different name. Just watch out if there are loads of new accounts all joining the same party at the same time, that’s all.
Recognised People Joining a Different Party - when people find a party they enjoy, they often stick to that for a couple of months. Well, occasionally, we all need a change and it’s fine to move parties. But be careful that you can trust the person! If an important member of a rival party joins your party, just bear in mind that they might not really be trying to help you if they’ve always been fighting against you. Take some time to get to know them first before entering them into all your elections.
Foreigners Joining One Party - most PTOers target foreign countries rather than their own one. So, if a large group of foreigners join your party, certainly welcome them because that could be a great thing! But, again, get to know them first before you enter them as your CP candidate or you invite them into Congress.
In conclusion, the commonly used system of immigration (I mentioned it earlier) is quite good but it would be hard to enforce unless there were large incentives like money or supplies.
Instead, it would be better to try to find parties which are trusted - the ATO parties. To prevent PTOs, be wary of new people joining your parties and/or people who have previously been hostile to your party or country. These people are the most likely to be PTOers (but they’re not always!).
Stay safe, have fun and enjoy your new Batzookas!
😛
-Jimbobfrey
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Comments
voted.
On e-spain its a inmigration commision, than decides before aprove. Anyways that hasn´t prevented the sell of CS, or to some people got their cs aproved just for particular´s interest. And apply correctly outgame, to ingame, isn´t easy thing.
Yes, you're correct. That's exactly the problem with trying to regulate immigration. It's a shame but, unless Congressmen were given a reason to want to stick to the rules, they could always sell CS if they wanted to.
As a person who went through described above Spanish immigration and ENTERED the politics by creating (neutral English-speaking) party 'Gibraltar Espagnol', I want to say following:
Nothing can prevent from PTO, especially in small countries without bonuses.
People can lie in order to get the citizenship.
I think that the best idea would be to put a limit on how many players of the same RL country immigrate each month. Don't create big clusters of immigrants, let them melt into your political spectrum first.
This idea works well in real world too. US Diversity Visa Lottery. People from Mexico or China can't use it because more than 50,000 nationals of those countries came to the USA in last 5 years.
Thank you.
That's an interesting idea to limit immigrants based on RL nationality rather than eRepublik nationality. The only problem I can foresee is 'how do you know what their RL nationality is?' I think that could be an interesting policy to try and test, good idea 🙂
Check friend list, usually it works well
Checking friend lists can be useful, but a determined PTOer can mask who real friends are, either by deleting friends who would make him look suspicious or by inviting friends who make him look good. Many of the people I know, including me, accept almost all friend requests. In eBelgium, if people didn't know that, they could say "oh, this person is a friend of MaryamQ, he must be okay", but in fact I might have no idea who it really is. There are some days when I get half a dozen or more requests, and many are from people I never hear from again.
That's the same as me actually. I accept any friend requests I receive and I also deliberately try to send friend requests to people I don't know so I can hear new stuff on my friends feed. Friends list can be good but I've got a whole bunch of people on my friends list, like MaryamQ does.
OK, check True Patriot history, friends list and write to the person. Honestly, this job sounds to me more like a RL border control. You have to learn how to evaluate the person by speaking to him for 3-5 minutes only.
You have outlined the difficulties in controlling immigration/PTO really well. Unfortunately, most countries have opposition parties who ignore any rules that are made, and claim their Plato-given right to admit anyone they want. They can do immense damage to a community, and in some cases, it may be irreparable. Rican, of eSwitzerland, wrote this article http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/how-to-avoid-a-pto-2270728/1/20, outlining some of the ways to avoid a PTO, and others were mentioned in the comments. However, even the best of methods is only as good as the will of the community to carry them throug and to keep on until the threat ends. There's no easy road, and it destroys what it may have taken years to build. It's a pretty lousy way to play the game, imo.
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Admins have difficulties to find and ban multies and their owners.
Look at North Korea, 2x more votes at elections than active citizens. No bb there because of internet blocked in NK, only banned players reborn or multies.
Now have a look to Switzerland, when a Romanian citizen entered with a multi. Hungarians did also that few month ago in Switzerland.
It is quite impossible to block those multies without a good admin support!
I used to do this, but people complained, which is why we have the current non-system
There is a solution to prevent PTO and I have presented it to the admins a year ago, but they are ignorant and don't listen to us players.
You can't prevent a rogue congresmen to enter the congress and give CS to PTOers - but here's my solution to the problem:
Let the President of each country have to verify / confirm each CS approval of any congresman. It will be a method of " 24h silent approval " meaning that each CP will have the option to prevent PTOers entering the country if he sees that someone got CS without the approval of the immigration committee of that country.
That's a really amazing idea! That could be great, particularly for the countries which are most at risk from PTOs. The admins need to include this in-game!
the threat of forig PTO is minor...
We don't exactly offer much to a would be forig PTOer...
An internal PTO is a different story altogether though. The past 2-3 months is the safest we have been for a while in that regard.
Given that recent governments have not been spending would the average person even notice if the government has its money stolen? The government would still not spend anything.
V!
Voted. I understand all of this and agree perfectly. I just don't understand how a PTO'er can gain so many allies to their cause. There must be some big cheques flying around to stop them from telling the world that they are being bought to serve a PTO'er. Can someone please tell me how they gain so much support without being compromised?
Well, some would perhaps use money but I reckon (this is just a guess though) that PTOers would willingly do it if they're doing it for a cause. I mean, if some TWO people wanted to PTO a CoT country or something like that, then they'd probably be excited about it and more careful to keep it quiet.
It's easy to gain PTOers. Plenty out there that play purely for the lulz.
Ah I see.
Good article.