Join the new world

While we play the game, there is a ministry who screens citizen applications for possible terrorists or worse. They try to prevent take-overs from the inside. Genuine gentleman agents, MI5-style? Big Brother who's watching us? Or simply hard working citizen servants?

We peek behind the curtains of the Ministry of Home Affairs, as we get the grand tour. MoHA Spir Tus explains how it all works.

We have to check the citizen application page for new applicants. When there are new ones, we will send them a Citizen appliance form, with some standard questions. These questions include things like their personal statistics (ebirthday, past citizenships, experience level, strength, top damage), activity (will you be politically active, will you join the forum/IRC?) and intentions (why do you want to join eNL?). At the same time we open a new topic on the Security Council section of the forum and write down the basic statistics of the applicant and inform everyone that there is a new applicant. These opening posts include things like name, profile link, Birth date, current citizenship, level, strength, top damage, the expiry date and the message. These last two things are things we receive from the applicants on the citizen application page ingame.
When we have the answers on the form, we will also write those down in the topic specially made for the applicant.

There is indeed an expiry date. From the moment you send the application ingame, erepublik gives us a deadline of five days to accept of deny the request. If we didn't finish the whole procedure in time the applicant has to apply again.



The most important thing to look for with new citizens is their credibility and if they are trustworthy. The primary goal of the Home Affairs department is to secure the safety of our country. We don't need people who have bad intentions or a troublesome past. If there are doubts about the answers they give on the form, we will contact them and ask additional individual questions. If the procedures takes a long time, we also contact them to keep them up to date. But this depends on who runs the Ministry of Home Affairs. As a tool we have the citizen appliance form, made with google docs. It's very handy to give us quickly the information we need to start the procedure.

Right now we have a team of three people at MoHa and we will discuss every new application with eachother, the vice president and the country president. The MoHa himself has the final say whether we accept or deny a new citizen (and of course the CP if he doesn't agree). But of course this is all based on the opinion of the community. The opinions of the Dutch citizens are very important. Especially when they already know the applicants, or can even vouch for them. It will be much easier to get citizenship if you know people in the eNetherlands.

Usually we don't have that many applicants. Last month we had 5 applications, the month before 9. But there are also months with only three. It depends on the government in charge how many people will be accepted. The immigration policy is a short term policy and the strictness changes every month. Last month and the month before we had a very loosened immigration policy, with 11 passes and 3 denials. This month we will probably be a bit stricter.

If you are interested to know more about the immigration procedure, I recommend to visit the Security Council for Immigrants on the forum of the eNetherlands.

Thank you for informing our readers on how the MoHA works, Spir Tus.

Signed,

Baron Van Zon
Your Chief-editor