Germany finally announces most awaited nationality law changes. Immigrants can now attain German citizenship in five years instead of eight. Getting a German passport should be easier. The German government lowers the hurdles and shortens the deadline. The new law also includes advantages for Germans.
German nationality is also possible in three years
In the case of “special integration achievements”, such as a proven language level of C1, three years should also suffice. Previously, this shortest nationality period was only possible for those who used to marry a German national.
According to Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), even faster naturalization is possible. Anyone who is particularly well-integrated can obtain German citizenship after just three years. This applies to people who speak German very well, achieve excellent results at work, or do voluntary work, said Nancy Faeser, SPD politician.
According to the draft law, dual nationality is also possible, and there is talk of allowing multiple nationalities. “Many immigrants feel like Germans, but don’t want to cut ties with their country of origin completely,” says Faeser. In the future, they would no longer be forced to give up part of their identity. So far, additional German citizenship has been reserved for EU foreigners only.
Immigrants who have been living in Germany for several years should get their German passports more quickly. Previously they had to be in Germany for eight years, but in the future five will be enough. In a draft law by the traffic light, which is available to ZDF today, it says that faster naturalizations are an “incentive to integrate quickly”.
Compared to other EU countries, Germany naturalizes fewer people. In 2019, EU countries naturalized an average of two percent of their foreign population, but Germany only had 1.3 percent.
What is the new German nationality law all about?
In the future, foreigners should be able to be naturalized after five instead of eight years. The prerequisite for the German passport is that:
- you have passed a naturalization test and,
- earn your living “mainly yourself”.
The coalition government wants to enable naturalization applicants to keep their foreign passports if they want to become German citizens. This emerges from a draft law on citizenship law that the ministries of the traffic light government have agreed on. Conversely, anyone who acquires foreign citizenship should be able to keep their German passport in the future.
There were also differences when it came to the extent to which applicants had to secure their own livelihood. The Ministry of Justice, led by the FDP, only wants to naturalize people in exceptional cases who cannot, i.e. who have less than 60 percent of the median income – that is the threshold generally defined by poverty researchers. The exception should apply to:
- contract and guest workers,
- People who have been in full-time employment for 20 months in the past 24 months, as well as
- Spouses of those people who care for minor children.
There are doubts as to whether this regulation would be constitutional. This would exclude people with disabilities or the chronically ill.
No test for members of the guest and contract worker generation
Children born in Germany to foreign parents should also be able to become Germans more quickly. The condition: one parent must have lived in Germany for five years. So far it has also been eight years.
For people from the guest and contract worker generation living in Germany, the traffic light makes naturalization easier in order to honor “the enormous lifetime achievements of the guest worker generation for our country,” as Faeser says. These are people who came to the Federal Republic as workers on the basis of recruitment agreements up to 1974 or on the basis of contracts concluded with the GDR government up to 1990, as well as their relatives.
These exceptions were also the biggest point of contention in the coalition. The Ministry of the Interior, led by the social democrat Faeser, only wanted to exempt applicants over the age of 67 from the naturalization test. At the insistence of the FDP, the test is now no longer applicable for all members of the guest and contract worker generation, and these citizenship applicants are only required to have spoken German. Oral language skills should also be sufficient for all applicants, even if more is not possible “despite serious and sustained efforts”.
Who cannot get citizenship?
Anyone who has committed criminal offenses should not be able to obtain a German passport, the draft law goes on to say. The same applies to people who have attracted attention through “anti-Semitic, racist, xenophobic or other inhumanely motivated actions”. If the naturalization authority becomes aware of a final conviction, it should ask the public prosecutor’s office whether such motives were behind the judgment.
With its law, the traffic light also ends a previously existing injustice: Syrians or Afghans who have been living in Germany for a long time and who received a German passport after eight years in Germany have two citizenships. Because their home states do not release their citizens from citizenship as a matter of principle. So they were already dual nationals, while German Turks or other foreigners who had been living in Germany for a long time were not allowed to do so.