UNDERHILL — President Elara Hargrove signed a sweeping executive order on Wednesday expanding RONA's asylum and humanitarian admission frameworks to include new categories of American citizens who face documented political persecution by the federal government in Washington — a move that the administration called a moral imperative and critics immediately labeled a provocation.

The order, entitled the American Sanctuary Expansion Directive, creates three new pathways for admission: one for individuals facing formal legal proceedings assessed by RONAn authorities to be politically motivated; one for members of recognized civil rights, labor, and journalistic organizations operating under documented government surveillance or harassment; and one for immediate family members of existing RONAn citizens or permanent residents originating from the former U.S. states.

"We did not choose the world in which people must flee their homes to find freedom," President Hargrove said at a signing ceremony in the Executive Residence's Garden Room. "But we live in that world. And in that world, RONA will be what it was always meant to be — a place where the ideals this continent once proclaimed are actually practiced." The remarks were met with extended applause from the gathered senators and Cabinet officials.

The Interior Ministry estimates that the new directive will make an additional forty to sixty thousand people per year immediately eligible to apply for asylum or humanitarian status, more than doubling the current annual intake. The Ministry said it would deploy additional processing officers to the twelve border intake facilities within thirty days and would establish a new digital application portal by the second quarter of 2040.

The State Department in Washington issued a statement calling the order "an illegal and hostile act" that "encourages the abandonment of American citizens' legal obligations." The statement threatened unnamed "consequences" but did not specify any concrete measures. RONAn Foreign Minister Isabeau Côté, in a written response, said that RONA "does not accept the premise that providing refuge to those who fear their government constitutes an act of hostility toward that government."

Civil society organizations in RONA and across the EU expressed strong support. The Brussels-based Coalition for Democratic Refuge called it "the most significant expansion of asylum rights in the North Atlantic since the post-war European conventions." Several EU member states indicated they would watch RONA's implementation closely, with a view to coordinating their own responses to Americans seeking refuge in Europe.