Should the community allow questions that have clear political bias?

Question

Referring this question, I have the following thought.

TL;DR: Willingness to obtain Russian citizenship may be considered as a way of assisting Russian terrorism. Should the community support such questions?

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Today's Russian regime is known to abuse Russian citizenship to invade countries. The typical pattern is as follows:

1. Russian gov't issues Russian passports to whoever wants them, regardless whether or not it violates local laws of the countries, many of which prevent dual citizenship;
2. In return, these people sign some agreements with Russian secret service, KGB, agreeing to participate in protest actions, claimed that "Russian citizens are discriminated" in their country of living;
3. Russia invades the target country "to defend Russian citizens" or otherwise destabilize situation there.

This happened several times already:

Moldova, 1992

While the majority of Moldovans see themselves as culturally close to Romania, 200,000 people in Transnistria are ethnic Russians and have Russian citizenship, which could serve as a pretext for Russian action. — International Business Times

Georgia, 2008:

Most residents of South Ossetia are Russian citizens with Russian passports. — Wikipedia

Syria, 2012-2013:

Russian marine and air power head for Syria versus Western intervention – “to defend Russian citizens,” says Moscow — prisonplanet.com

Ukraine, 2014

Lavrov: Troops in Crimea Protecting Russian Citizens — Voice of America

Plus numerous times abusing Russian minorities in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Belorussia.

Considering the above, willingness to get Russian passport may be considered an attempt to build a Russian minority in yet another country that will be subsequently "defended" by Russian tanks or terror squadrons.

P.S. I'm aware that my question may look like a strong accusation. It requires a large article to explain everything in details, which is impossible to accomplish within a single Meta question.

P.P.S. I'm quite aware that the original asker may not have direct willingness to participate that, and my question is primarily based on precaution that is easy to prevent but hard to resolve once it happened.

Answer 1

One person's desire to move to a country or obtain citizenship does not mean they endorse the political views of that country. That's not a clear political bias at all. Willingness to get a Russian citizen does not necessarily endorse their politics, indeed, once a person has citizenship they have the right to vote in opposition to the current political movement!

Indeed, they may be moving to be closer to family, for a job, or for better education / healthcare or climate. They may need to obtain a citizenship in order to stay long term, rather than a residence permit.

When at all possible, we should keep politics out of it - whatever reason a person has to move countries is theirs.

Answer 2

While that question is probably politically biased, as it is currently stated, it is a request for the information, how to get Russian citizenship.

The best way to deal with such question is to answer it in the meritorical way, in the same time removing any non-meritorical fluff.

If the OP is a Kremlin troll, he/she probably expects to be asked why he/she wants to get Russian citizenship and than the whole litany will follow. A good answer stating, that Russian Federation use to use very relaxed citizenship policy under some circumstances, which is politically motivated, will give the exactly opposite effect as a potential troll would expect, in the same time giving the community the valuable answer.

How to deal with political motivations: edit them out and then pretend they've never existed.

Answer 3

You've hit it partially, seeking citizenship beyond that which you were granted by being born in a particular country is essentially striking a deal. There's something about obtaining citizenship in that country that is attractive to you, and something about you having citizenship that is attractive to them.

Some countries will afford you very attractive tax benefits in return for obtaining citizenship by opening a large time-deposit account as part of the process. Here's something good for you, in return for doing something good for us.

We can't be in the business of attempting to reverse-engineer someone's intentions in the absence of them explicitly stating what those might be, and we can't get in the business of asking folks to do that - it's often a very personal decision that they're contemplating.

While I agree with you that handing out passports like activated pre approved high-interest credit cards in the mail is a bit of a deplorable practice, it's far outside of our scope to take it on. Just assume good faith and honorable intentions, unless stated otherwise, at which point the question is likely to have a rather interesting bouquet of problems to begin with :)

Answer 4

It's quite easy to find something to object to in many of the questions asked here. After all, many people seem to be hostile to the very idea of other people moving to their country, some feel taxes or mandatory healthcare are oppressive, others may think than trying to escape those is despicable, etc.

As long as the question is focused on a practical problem and describes it as factually as possible, I don't think there is anything to object to. We should however edit/close/delete questions that dwell on the motivations or contain irrelevant political commentary and comments trying to start a discussion about those.

In that particular case, the question might be a bit broad but it seems entirely factual and neutral, I don't perceive any “clear political bias” and I can't help but have the feeling that the real problem is a perception that the person asking it might not share our politics (in the sense of beliefs commonly held in the countries many participants come from). We certainly should not make it mandatory to express certain political views (about Russia or about anything else) before asking questions…