Don’t you think he looks tired?

Cries in Australian

In Australia you can buy permanent residency, which is then a pathway to citizenship.

Replicators being unusable because of power shortages was an early plot point in Voyager, and there are things that can’t just be replicated since they often had to trade with friendly civilisations that they encountered.

Of course, the real answer is that they went with whatever rules suited the plot at the time, consistency be damned.