Last month, the Ministry of Finance released Nepal’s Current Economic Situation Report 2083, a hard-hitting macroeconomic diagnosis concluding that Nepal’s economy is crippled by crony capitalism, policy corruption and weak governance. With the ambition of becoming a $100 billion economy within the next few years—currently standing at $49 billion, crawling at 3.5 percent growth and attracting a mere 0.2 percent in FDI—it is high time Nepal looked beyond its borders and learned from the economic transformation that Deng Xiaoping architected in China, with the help of the Chinese Diaspora. The preferential tax rates, special economic zones, simplified licensing and diaspora-friendly legal frameworks resulted in overseas Chinese contributing over 67 percent of China’s total FDI.

The lesson is clear: A nation’s most loyal investors are its diaspora. Paradoxically, the new draft for the Non-Resident Nepali (NRN) Act currently circulating is turning its back on the very community Nepal should be courting—the Nepali-Bhutanese diaspora. Of Nepali origin, they are now firmly rooted across the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and beyond, with the financial standing and emotional bond to become Nepal’s most committed investment partners.

Once refugees in Jhapa and Morang, nearly 113,000 Nepali-speaking Bhutanese of Nepali origin were resettled across eight countries through a UNHCR programme, finding new homes in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and other countries. Today, including those born on foreign soil, this community in the US alone is close to 120,000, and they are thriving. With a median household income of $100,151, they sit above the American Asian average and are doing exceptionally well economically. With the second generation now entering colleges and the workforce in large numbers, this is the high-potential investment generation Nepal cannot afford to ignore. Walking among them today are future doctors, engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs and perhaps one day, a senator or a president. Failing to bind this generation to Nepal through policy, law or even the smallest formal acknowledgement is a bureaucratic error that hands away Nepal’s most social, cultural and economic allies.

A few weeks ago, I attended a cultural programme in Ohio organised by the Association of Nepali Origin in the US. A five-year-old girl, born in the US, was dancing to Pattako ke Jhora—a traditional Magar folk song—with the kind of cultural pride that seems to have faded quietly back home. Other groups took the stage, waving the Nepali flag, singing patriotic songs in daura suruwal and bhadgaule topi. Beyond the community hall, this cultural ownership extends to academia as well. The Nepalese Student Association at Ohio State University, led by this second generation, regularly celebrates major Nepali festivals in one of America’s largest campuses. These are informal cultural ambassadors that go unacknowledged by Nepal’s policymakers.

Yet our new NRN draft is failing to include them. And the story does not end with culture. Along with several city councilmen, this community already has two state representatives—one elected in New Hampshire, another set to take office in Kentucky, both capable of advocating for Nepal’s interests when it counts. This is just the beginning. The senators will come. The Capitol Hill voices will come. Nepal must decide today whether it will have the wisdom to formally bind these allies to its national interest before that window closes.

So where does the problem lie? The answer is in the new NRN draft currently circulating, which, in its present form, excludes this entire community. A government that preaches ‘Once a Nepali, always a Nepali’ is drafting a law that says otherwise. The new NRN draft is undeniably more progressive than its 2008 predecessor. Extending eligibility to persons of Nepali origin holding foreign citizenship is a welcome step forward. However, it continues to exclude Nepalis residing in SAARC nations. There may be legitimate security considerations behind this exclusion, for Nepal’s open border with its mighty neighbours is not a concern to be dismissed lightly. A precise amendment of extending NRN eligibility to persons of Nepali origin who migrated to a third country from a SAARC nation closes this gap entirely, without opening the border concerns that justified the original exclusion.

The timing could not be more pressing. We speak endlessly of brain drain, youth migration and remittance dependency, and rightly so. Remittances today constitute 28 percent of Nepal’s GDP, and 2,230 young Nepalis leave daily with work permits in hand. Against this backdrop, turning away a community of nearly 140,000 Nepali-speaking people in Western countries—people who want to invest in Nepal, spend in dollars and strengthen ties with their cultural homeland—is a missed opportunity disguised as policy failure.

The government’s proposed annual diaspora bond programme of Rs1 trillion has genuine potential, but only if the architecture is right. Israel built a $52 billion diaspora bond programme over seven decades by making entry as affordable as $100. Nepal would do well to adopt the same philosophy: Lower the threshold and widen the eligibility. If we formally invite this community into our Visit Nepal campaign, they will return to the West as Nepal’s most credible ambassadors, carrying our culture, our story and our investment case into the corridors of Western society. Their knowledge, economic weight, soft power and innovative capacity are assets Nepal can no longer afford to overlook. Parliament will scrutinise this draft, as it should. But scrutiny should sharpen inclusion, not justify exclusion. How to include people, under what framework, and with what protections; these are legitimate legislative questions. Whether to include at all should not be one of them.