Make the right to stay grow with the years people live in a society, not with how they first entered
In short
- Refugees and people who came to work both gain more rights the longer they live in the country.
- After living there for a set number of years, a person receives permanent residency without waiting for an official's decision.
- Work permits are no longer tied to one employer, so people can change jobs freely.
- Children raised in the country can choose citizenship, whatever their parents' status.
- Courts, not government offices, decide whether to expel someone for a serious crime.
If this comes true
In the spring before applying to college, a young person who came at age twelve with their parents receives citizenship papers without even filing a request at the counter, and finds the name of the town they have always attended school in written in the registered domicile box.
Perhaps
A man who worked four years on a farm, just short of the number of years when his rights would build up, might be told his contract will not be renewed and that he must go home.
Water so far 💧 0
The proposal in detail
This proposal changes the yardstick for the legal standing of people who live across borders, from the status they entered under to how many years they have actually lived in that society. It covers people who fled as refugees, people who came to work for a fixed period, international students, and even people living without documents. The system works in stages. After living in the country for a certain period, a person can use public services such as health care and education on the same terms as citizens. A few years later, permanent residency is granted automatically, and after that comes a stage where they can choose citizenship. Each country sets the number of years for each stage by law, but officials cannot stretch them at their discretion, and an employer's recommendation cannot be made a condition. The years lived are confirmed through several records, such as resident registration, tax payments, school attendance, and medical records, and a wide range of records that the person can show are accepted. The method of tying a work permit to a specific employer is also ended, so that moving to another workplace within the same field or region does not break the count of years of stay. Children born in the country, and children who came young and grew up there, can choose citizenship around adulthood, regardless of their parents' status. As an exception, for people convicted of a serious crime, the decision to stop their years from building up or to send them out of the country is made case by case by a court, not by the administration. The country keeps, as before, the power to decide how many new people to accept and on what entry conditions.
BenefitsThe law catches up with how people really live, and exploiting them gets harder
If people know that their standing will become secure after some years of living there, they find it easier to make long-term choices, such as learning the language, earning qualifications, renting a home, and sending their children to the local school. For the receiving society too, settled people who keep building their skills and paying taxes are a steadier support than bringing in new people each time and sending them home after a short while. When work permits are cut off from employers, there is a way out of a bad workplace, and since people do not lose their right to stay when they report unpaid wages or violence, employers have much less power to take advantage of someone in a weak position. Because renewals no longer depend on an official's discretion, the unfairness of results that differ from one officer to another, and the cost and time of each procedure, also shrink. Refugees and workers are treated by the same yardstick, so the possibilities of a person's life no longer split sharply by which door they came through. And when children raised in the country can choose citizenship, they can picture their future with pride as members of the society they grew up in, and this prevents people from living for generations without rights.
DrawbacksThe power to limit entry weakens, and conflict over borders deepens
If rights build up from years lived alone, people who entered without going through the proper procedures, or who stayed past their deadline, could reach permanent residency or citizenship just by going unnoticed for enough years. To those who followed the rules and waited their turn, this is unfair, and it could hand smugglers the sales pitch that once you get in, you win. For a country, the option of taking in people for a fixed term to cover a temporary labor shortage practically disappears, and more countries might hesitate to accept people at all. With a year-count standard, there is also a risk of backfiring: employers or governments might cut contracts just before people reach the standard, or allow only short stays from the start, pushing people into even less secure positions. In addition, there is a strong view that deciding who becomes a member of a society is a basic question that the people of that society should settle through elections, and opening a path to citizenship automatically through years lived would be seen as narrowing what is decided democratically. The danger that such a backlash gives a tailwind to xenophobic politics is also something those who choose this proposal would have to take on.
Learn the background
Even now, the standing of people who live across borders is largely decided by the name of the status they entered with. Even after ten years at the same factory, a worker whose first contract was as a fixed-term worker lives with the fear of being sent home at every renewal. Some people wait years for a decision on whether they will be recognized as refugees, and during that time they live unable to work or to move. In many countries, a work permit is also tied to a single employer, and because defying the employer can mean losing the right to stay at all, it becomes hard to complain about unpaid wages or excessive hours. When parents have lost their documents, a child who was born and raised in the country may have no citizenship and be stopped at the doorway to school or work. These people pay taxes, support local work, and live as neighbors, yet they have no way to make their voices heard in politics and no footing from which to plan their future. A system in which a single classification at the moment of entry binds the rest of a person's life is far removed from real life.
Choose them ready to accept their drawbacks too (up to 5)
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This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-20b) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes