Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.06.2007, Blaðsíða 7

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On April 16, 2007, the Icelandic Parliament passed a
law granting Icelandic citizenship to eighteen people
who presumably did not qualify under the Ministry of
Justice’s regular application process. Parliament normally
passes two such laws per year, and had most recently
granted thirteen people citizenship in December 2006,
and eighteen people citizenship in June 2006. One of
those who received Icelandic citizenship on April 16
was a young Guatemalan woman who is the girlfriend
of the son of Jónína Bjartmarz. Jónína Bjartmarz was
at the time Iceland’s Minister of the Environment, and
had from 2000 to 2006 been a member of Parliament’s
General Committee, which oversees granting citizen-
ship by law.
An act of parliament is one of the two ways in which
foreigners may become Icelandic citizens, according to
the law on citizenship (#23/1952). More commonly, for-
eigners apply under Article 5 of the law to the Ministry
of Justice, which may then grant them citizenship if they
have lived in Iceland for a certain number of years and
if they fulfil various other conditions.
The story of Parliament’s decision to grant the Guate-
malan woman citizenship exploded in the Icelandic media
at the end of April 2007. Kastljós, the state television
channel’s evening magazine program, highlighted it
several nights in a row. The young woman had lived in
Iceland for only a year and a half (many foreigners wait
up to seven years), and compared to other foreigners
here, she did not seem to have an unusually strong need
for Icelandic citizenship. Most of the media discussion
seemed to center around the question of whether Jónína
Bjartmarz had exercised some kind of inappropriate in-
fluence over the parliamentary committee’s decision.
Bjartmarz’s party lost several crucial seats in the par-
liamentary elections on May 12th (hers included), and
some bloggers and pundits speculated that Kastljós’s
coverage of the issue had been politically motivated.
Bjartmarz lodged a complaint against Kastljós with the
ethics committee of the Icelandic Journalists’ Associa-
tion. On June 19th, the committee ruled that Kastljós’s
coverage had not been sufficiently well researched,
and constituted a “serious violation” of the journalists’
association’s code of ethics. The same day, Kastljós
published a detailed rebuttal of the committee’s ruling,
and accused the committee itself of sloppy research and
reasoning.
What Happened?
There has been so much smoke from these fires that
it has been hard to see the real issues in the affair. The
important question is not whether Jónína Bjartmarz
improperly influenced the General Committee to ap-
prove her daughter-in-law’s request. (I haven’t seen
any evidence that she did.) The issue that needs to be
addressed – and could be resolved – is that there is no
publicly available information about how the process
of requesting citizenship from Parliament works. None.
Except Article 6 of the law, which is only three sentences
long and not very helpful. This lack of information almost
ensures that the law will be applied unfairly.
The Ministry of Justice gives fairly full information
on the regular citizenship application process on its
website (www.domsmalaraduneyti.is). In my experi-
ence, Iceland’s foreign residents are very familiar with
its rules and procedures, such as minimum residence
requirements and the need for two references. A lot
of people receive citizenship this way: over 800 did so
during the year 2006.
The Ministry’s website gives no information about
applying to Parliament, so I looked on the parliamentary
website, and particularly on the General Committee’s
page. I couldn’t find any instructions on how to apply.
All I managed to turn up was the text of the bi-annual
laws granting citizenship. I tried to contact the secretary
of the General Committee, but she was away for summer
vacation. I tried Googling “ríkisborgararéttur Alþingi”
(“citizenship Parliament”), but found nothing relevant.
Until the Jónína Bjartmarz case broke, I think that
very few foreign residents of Iceland ever imagined
themselves worthy of receiving citizenship by act of
Parliament. It was something reserved for very special
people, like Bobby Fischer. I have only known one person
who received citizenship this way. This person played
for an Icelandic national sports team – the custody of
an innocent child was at issue – and they’d been turned
down by the Ministry of Justice.
I myself have been patiently waiting for my seven
years to be up in 2008, so that I can apply through the
regular process. I never dreamed I would have any right
to ask Parliament to single me out for special treatment,
even though my reasons for needing to be fast-tracked
are arguably stronger than Jónína Bjartmarz’s daughter-
in-law’s. And how could I know that I might qualify
for special treatment, when the rules aren’t posted
anywhere?
So the problem is that not everyone has access
to the information that applying to Parliament is an
option. Jónína Bjartmarz had sat on the General Com-
mittee, and surely knew how the system worked. One
can easily imagine that her daughter-in-law would not
otherwise have known to apply. Similarly, the sports
player I mentioned above might not have known about
the possibility of applying to Parliament but for a near
relative who worked as a parliamentary staff member.
A Loophole in the System?
I can’t fault people who have access to information
for using it legally. But I do see injustice in a situation
in which only certain people are aware that it is practi-
cally possible to apply to Parliament for citizenship. Is
it fair that Jónína Bjartmarz’s daughter-in-law applied,
while many other equally or better qualified potential
applicants did not – just because they had no way of
knowing that they could?
Not only are there no instructions about how to
apply to Parliament, there is no clear information about
when one may apply. According to everyone I talked to,
the custom has been that (except for cases like Bobby
Fischer) you may apply to Parliament for citizenship only
after having gone through the normal, months-long
application process through the Ministry of Justice and
getting denied. (The ministry’s standard letter of denial
mentions that it is possible to appeal to Parliament.)
But it seems that Jónína Bjartmarz’s daughter-in-law
applied directly to Parliament, without first receiving a
denial from the Ministry of Justice. There is nothing in
the law which forbids this. But neither have I found
any public information anywhere saying that direct
application is permitted or explaining how to go about
it. If direct application is really going to be an option, it
needs to be equally available to everyone.
In researching this article, the only way I managed to
get information about the process of applying to Parlia-
ment for citizenship was to call up people who have been
personally or professionally involved in such applications.
We all know that Iceland is a country where who you
know often matters more than what you know. And if
it’s a matter of finding a good plumber, a used car, or
that hidden hot spring that’s somewhere in the middle
of Eldborgarhraun, this is totally natural and fine. But if
it’s about citizenship – one of the most important legal
rights that we have – we need clear information that is
fairly accessible to all.
That means that it needs to be easy for foreigners in
Iceland to find out whether, when, and how they may
apply to Parliament for citizenship. The newly elected
General Committee should lay out the rules and pro-
cedures right away. By doing that, our parliamentarians
would show that they rank fairness and justice for all
the people on this island at least as high as sympathy
for a single one.
Who Knows How the System Works?
Text by Ian Watson
There has been so much smoke
from these fires that it has been
hard to see the real issues in
the affair.
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