[registrars] residence or citizenship??

[Amadeu Abril i Abril <Amadeu@nominalia.com>]

Hi all,

Our current Articles say that each NC representative must come form a
different region "as defined in the Bylaws".

The question here is that during a long period the predominnt view was
that the dirving cirterion for rgional diversity requirment was
residence. But the current Btalwas clarly state "citizenship" as such
requirment, both for the Board directos and the SO represntatives, as
for instance Names Council reps.

This seems to come from formal GAC requests, clearly in favour of
citizenship (for obvious reasons, I must admit).

The question is tht in our past experiment, we used residency as the
drivng cirterion. Bob Connelly or Richard Lindsay /who eventually got
elected) were considered as AP reprdesentatives despite theirnUS
citizenship because they live and work in Asia (japan, in both cases).
I have no didea whether all NA cnadiates wre really US or Canadian
citizens for that matter). 

I would like personally asking the the Board to revise this decision,
and wjhile keeping citizenship for the Board directors, allow
citizenship as the dirving cirtierion for SO councils' elections. I
will try to get some support for this proposal, even within GAC and
discuss it in LA next November.

But this does not solve our problem for the next elections. My sense
in Santiago was that most registrars present also believe that
residency, ie, a living and working relationship with the professional
evnironemnt whose interests is supposed to represnet, instead of a
possible long-arms, legal, cultural and affextive relationshipbut
perhaps deprived of any professional contact is a superior cirterion. 

In this respect, and in the case we want to keep that cirterion for
the elctions, we could ask for a waiver form the Board, as stated in
their resolution copied below:

" FURTHER RESOLVED, that Section 3(c) of Article VI-B of the Bylaws of
the Corporation is hereby replaced in its entirety with the following: 

"Each Constituency shall select up to three individuals to represent
that Constituency on the NC, no two of whom may be citizens of the
same Geographic Region, as defined in Article V, Section 6, except
that, with the consent of the Board, this latter requirement may be
suspended for the term of a particular individual upon a showing that
it is impracticable for the Constituency to obtain such geographic
diversity. Any such waiver shall be granted only upon a commitment by
the constituency to a substantive plan to diversify its membership,
thereby minimizing the likelihood of the need for future waivers from
the Board. Notwithstanding the foregoing, no Constituency may have
more representatives on the NC than there are members of the
Constituency." 

*******

I submit that we should ask for such waiver_

* not in order to have double represntation form one region, but only
to apply, at leassst this time, residency instead of citizenship in
determining the regions
* We make clear that the current numbe of distirbution of accredited
registrars makes it difficult to reconcile both ideas, citizenship +
solid working relationship and residce, and that outreach in this
temrs is not the solution, as we have a pre-dfined potential
population (those apllying and obtaingng accritation as gTLD registrars).

I would also like to state that we would like using resiidency as  the
permanent cirterion, but I am nto sure we will have the time to
formally vote on that....

The NC will hold a telconference next Wednesday. All constituencies
are encouraged to announce whther they intend to ask for a
"geographical diversity waiver" of any kind, so I would like haing a
sense of the Registrar Constituency opinion by that date. At least a feeling.


Best regards, and sorry ofor not having raised this issue beofre. Hope
my health will contribute to the process form now on ;-))

Amadeu