Immigration Reports

---

Immigration Report
Month Ending: February 2020

---

Part One:  This Month’s Stats

---

Immigration cases carried forward from January 2020:  8

Number of new applications received in February 2020: 9 (Decrease from last month = -18%)

– Of which, were rejected outright: 2 (Both for being identified as a spam bot)

– of which, the applicant created a Wittenberg account: 2 (Decrease from last month = -66%)

Number of accepted applicants that did not go on to create a Witt account: 5 (Increase from last month = 66%)

Number of active cases leading to a naturalization: 2

Number of active cases terminated: 4

Number of active immigration cases carrying forward to the next period: 4 (Decrease from last month = -50%)

---

Part Two:  Administrative tasks completed and policy decisions made by immigration authorities in the reporting period

---

a)  Permanent Secretary for Immigration remains vacant:  The Minister of the Interior has decided not to delegate the duties of immigration until all planned reforms are in place.

b)  Status of immigration in relation to migration to ‘New Wittenberg’:  The Chancery certified New Wittenberg as the new official forum for Kingdom business during this month, thus all immigration business shall now be handled there. Only one active application remains on the old forum, however that applicant has also registered on the new forums (dual threads). Immigration will have completed full Witt migration upon conclusion of that particular case.

c) The legislative proposals put forward by the Ministry last month have been passed into law by the Legislature. The changes made by those bills shall take effect immediately (pending Royal signature/veto) and shall be implemented during the next month.

d) A major project has been started by the Ministry to build a new online resource for immigration services. This project ties together with another project which started last month (creation of new citizen packets). Both of these projects (now in tandem) will take a considerable length of time to complete, however a target for completion has been set for within the current Cosa session.

---

Immigration Report
Month Ending: January 2020

---

Part One:  This Month’s Stats

---

Immigration cases carried forward from December 2019:  5

Number of new applications received in January 2020: 11 (Increase from last month = 175%)

– Of which, were rejected outright: 2 (1 for being identified as a spam bot and 1 for being determined as nuisance)

– of which, the applicant created a Wittenberg account: 6 (Increase from last month = 100%)

Number of accepted applicants that did not go on to create a Witt account: 3 (Increase from last month = 300%)

Number of active cases leading to a naturalization: 0 (Increase/Decrease = No change)

Number of active cases terminated: 3

Number of active immigration cases carrying forward to the next period: 8 (Increase from last month = 60%)

---

Part Two:  Administrative tasks completed and policy decisions made by immigration authorities in the reporting period

---

a)  Permanent Secretary for Immigration remains vacant:  The Minister of the Interior has decided not to delegate the duties of immigration until all planned reforms are in place.

b)  Status of immigration in relation to migration to ‘New Wittenberg’:  Immigration services attempted to formally migrate to “NewWitt” during the month of January.  However, the Chancery has yet to adopt the new forums and as such will only recognize posts made by prospective citizens on “OldWitt” as counting towards examination periods.  As a result, immigration is in a transition phase where incoming prospectives are being asked to register on both forums.

c)  Draft legislation was proposed to make a change to LEX.E.3.  The change would broaden the number of offices that the Ministry can consult with on the management of new Wittenberg accounts.  The Bill has been Clarked and will be voted on by the Ziu during February.

d) Draft legislation was proposed to make changes to LEX.E.4.  The mandatory limit for a Lexifore (LEX.E.4) would be changed from 40 days to 60, a new limit of 30 days for when a prospective never makes a first post on Witt in the first place would be created, and the requirement for the SoS to notify following termination would be removed and made a duty of Interior instead. The Bill has been Clarked and will be voted on by the Ziu during February.

e) Draft legislation was proposed to change the numbering of LEX.E.11-14, thus closing a gap in the numbering left behind by a previous repeal.  It was pointed out during debate that these changes have already been addressed and will be implemented when the new Organic Law takes effect. 

f) Work has begun on “New Citizens Packets”.  At this time a very rough draft has been completed on the first of these packets, which is a guide on the immigration process.  Very rough outlines for other packets has been scribbled down on topics of culture, civics and law.

g) A first draft of a new “Ministry Handbook on Immigration” has been written.  This handbook will be passed onto future successors to immigration offices.  It explains the various background processes of immigration and includes instructions on the usage of the new systems that have recently been put in place (the new immigration database, reports, etc)

---

Immigration Report
Month Ending: December 2019

---

Part One:  This Month’s Stats

---

Immigration cases carried forward from November 2019:  A small number of new immigration applications where handed-off at the time of the current Minister taking office.  Each of those applicants were contacted directly by email, but only one replied or took action.  Additionally, each of the existing immigration cases that were ‘live’ when the new Minister took office had reached the statutory limit put in place by LEX.E.4 and were all, subsequently, rejected. Thus, one immigration case was carried forward from the previous period.

Number of new applications received in December 2019: 4

– Of which, were rejected outright: 1 (for use of profanity and wanton remarks in the application)

– of which, the applicant created a Wittenberg account: 3

Number of active cases leading to a naturalization: 0

Adjustments: 1 – A case where an application was rejected per LEX.E.4, but the applicant since returned.  Immigration authorities has granted ‘visitor status’ to this applicant and they await an Act of the Ziu for naturalization to occur.

Number of active immigration cases carrying forward to the next period: 5

---

Part Two:  Administrative tasks completed and policy decisions made by immigration authorities in the reporting period

---

a)  Permanent Secretary for Immigration remains vacant:  The Minister of the Interior has decided not to delegate the duties of immigration until all planned reforms are in place.

b)  Status of immigration in relation to migration to ‘New Wittenberg’:  Immigration services carried out business as normal on ‘old Witt’ during the month of December.  From 1st January 2020, immigration shall formally migrate to ‘new Witt’.  All new applications in the new year shall be posted on the new forum and any applicants being carried forward shall be asked to make new accounts on the new forum.

c)  Immigration application backlog caught up with:  The backlog of applications has been dealt with.  All applicants have been contacted by email by the new Minister.  Only one of these applicants replied and took action by creating a Witt account.

d)  Changes made to the immigration application form:  Some changes have been made to the application form on the main website of Talossa.com

— i) The primary name field has been changed to read “Full Legal Name”.  Also, a guidance note has been added to this field, which reads: “Your full legal name is required here. This is the name that you would have printed on official documents like driving licences or ID cards.

— ii) The secondary name field has been changed to read “What name do you wish to be known as (if different from above)?”.  Also, a guidance note has been added to this field, which reads: “Sometimes people go about in daily life with a name that is different than their actual legal name.  Examples of this would be deed-poll name changes, married or divorced surnames, transgender name changes, nicknames, and professional aliases such as a pen name.  It is fine to be known in Talossa with such names.  If you fill in this box then this name will be displayed in your profile rather than your legal name, but we still require your legal name above for our records.”

— iii) The gender question has been changed from a drop-down menu of fixed options to a write-in text field.

e) New software implemented for back-end functions:  The software used for handling the immigration application form has been changed from “FS Contact” to “CF7 Forms”.  This has allowed the following changes:

— i) A simple email auto-responder to handle the initial application stage.  This removes a redundant work stage for immigration officials and cuts down the time taken to handle the first contact stage of an application.  Since this was implemented, the average time taken for applicants to send the application form through to the creation of a Witt account has been slashed to less than ten minutes.  The time taken for full account approval (following security checks) has been slashed to less than twelve hours.

— ii) The creation of a new immigration database.  The data from the immigration application form is now automatically pushed into a database in the back-end.  We no longer rely on email for this function.  The handover of duties from one immigration official to the next will be completely smooth in the future as all data is now stored in a central location.  Additionally, we will no longer suffer the problem of immigration applications ending up caught in email spam filters ever again.

f) New graphic/image created to replace text link.  A new graphic/image has been created to replace a simple text link which points to the immigration application form.  The image can be seen here: https://talossa.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/join-talossa.gif  –  The aim of this is to better grab the attention of possible prospectives passing through the site.

g) Immigration thread format changed:  The immigration introduction threads have had the format changed to include boxes for use of immigration services.  These boxes provide a space for the inclusion of important and relevant dates to an application as well as provide a space for immigration officials to append notes to an application.