The Bundesrat, Germany’s upper house of parliament, voted on Friday (February 2) to simplify the country’s citizenship laws, cutting meters of red tape in the process.

Once the naturalization reform comes into effect, reported the German news agency dpa, people coming from most countries in the world will be allowed to retain their original passport when they acquire German citizenship. Previously, this was mostly only available to fellow EU member states.

Under the new legislation, those who have lived in Germany for five years will be able to begin to apply for citizenship, instead of waiting the current requisite eight years. For those who are married to German citizens, the waiting time is reduced to four years.

Applicants who demonstrate “special integration achievements” can even reduce the time they wait to be naturalized to three years.

Double citizenship allowed

There is also a benefit for Germans applying for citizenship in countries outside the EU. Previously, they would have needed special authorization from the German authorities to acquire a second citizenship. Without this authorization, they risked losing their German passport. Now, they can acquire a new citizenship and keep their German one too.

In addition, anyone who arrived in Germany as a so-called guest worker (Gastarbeiter), or a contract worker in former East Germany only has to prove they speak German to be naturalized. They no longer have to do a test. This would apply to potentially hundreds of thousands of people.

Guest workers mostly started arriving in Germany from the 1950s onwards, to help with the economic boom that took over the country as it rebuilt from the rubble of World War Two. Many of those who might not yet have acquired citizenship would have come from Turkey, since until now, they would have had to renounce their Turkish citizenship in order to acquire German — something which many guest workers, and even their descendants, were not keen to do.

Guest workers just need to prove they can speak German

A significant proportion of the guest workers were also Italian, Spanish or Portuguese, but since all three countries are part of the EU, they could have acquired double citizenship more easily had they wanted to.

In former East Germany, foreign contract workers typically came from Mozambique, Vietnam and Cuba, as well as a selection of other socialist states around the world. Many were forced to leave as the former East German state was dismantled.

The regulations regarding their stays in the GDR had always been strict and most were forced to leave after a certain number of years even while the GDR was in full force. Even more were asked to leave, or felt they were no longer welcome, in the chaos following the fall of the wall, when jobs in former East Germany became scarce, and racism and discrimination culminated in a number of high profile attacks on buildings housing foreign workers.

Millions waiting to acquire citizenship

According to the German information platform for journalists, which gathers information on themes surrounding migration, refugees and discrimination, at the end of 2022, the German “Foreigners register” (Ausländerzentralregister AZR) counted around 5.3 million people living in Germany who could be eligible for citizenship. These were foreign-born citizens who had been living in Germany for at least ten years.

In reality, during that year just 168,500 people were granted citizenship.

Under the new rules, anyone applying for a German passport needs to be able to demonstrate they can support themselves and their dependents. It will also be harder for those receiving social welfare payments to gain citizenship.

Children born in Germany to foreign parents will also be granted citizenship at birth if one of those parents has been a legal resident of Germany for five years rather than the current eight.

New regulations represent ‘modern Germany’

Filiz Polat, migration expert for the Green Party, part of the ruling coalition, told dpa that the new rules represent the “modern immigration society that has long existed in Germany.”

But the new rules have also been met with some opposition, not least from the opposition conservatives, CDU and CSU. Thomas Strobl, a CDU candidate from Baden-Württemberg, was one of those who opposed the reform in the Bundesrat. He said the plans took the “wrong path,” reported dpa.

Another spokesperson from the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Andrea Lindholz, said the first thing her party would do if voted into power would be to reverse the legislation.

Strobl added that at present, the real-time process needed for true integration was on average 16.3 years, because “real integration, including language acquisition, takes time.” He added, that there were so many aspects of the new law that remained unclear that it would in fact create even more bureaucracy and end up overwhelming the German authorities.

However, there is a proportion of the population in Germany, who were born in the country, who speak perfect German and have gone right the way through the German education system, but until now have chosen not to take up German citizenship because it would have meant renouncing the passport of their parents’ birth country and symbolically cutting ties to their families.

The new laws are meant to end this kind of obstacle to being accepted as a German citizen.

Other changes to migration law

On Friday, the Bundesrat also voted through legal changes in other aspects of immigration legislation. Lawmakers, reported dpa, backed the Repatriation Improvement Act, which aims to speed up the deportation of criminals, dangerous offenders and smugglers.

Measures in the legislation should allow the government to turn around deportations more quickly and better enforce the notice to leave the country for anyone whose asylum applications are refused.

Regarding this particular measure, the Bundesrat urgently requested the government to provide clarification on when exactly the appointment of a lawyer is envisaged for people who have been ordered to return to their country of origin.

Many states have expressed worries that if people are notified of impending deportation, they might then abscond, making the whole process more complicated.

German citizenship comes with responsibilities and expectations

The new naturalization laws also contain an expectation of the kind of attitudes one needs to hold if one wants to be German. Antisemitism in any form is not tolerated. In fact, by taking on German citizenship, foreigners have to take on the “historic responsibility” for the National Socialist (Nazi) era, and participate in the protection of Jewish life, the German government says.

Also, anyone who can be shown to not hold to the principle of equality between men and women can also be refused a naturalization process. Any other failure to adhere to the German democratic principles will also prevent an application going ahead.

The new law, reported Germany’s Catholic news agency KNA, is expected to enter into force in three months to give the authorities “time to prepare” for the proposed changes.

Members of the ruling coalition, made up of the socialist SPD party, the Greens and the liberal FDP party, have described the law as an “important step forward” and “an historic change.”

Stateless people

Millions, reported KNA, are waiting to become German. The SPD’s Malu Dreyer, regional president for the state of Rheinland-Pfalz, who argued for the law in the Bundesrat, pointed out that even with the new regulations in place, it will still be difficult to go about naturalizing a group of about 30,000 people in Germany who are currently regarded as “stateless.”

According to Mediendienst Integration, in August 2023, there are about 29,500 “recognized stateless people” in Germany. About 37% of those are children. At least 8,300 of this group were actually born in Germany, but to parents who don’t possess a national citizenship of any country. About 60% of the group have lived in Germany for longer than five years. The numbers of those who are stateless has been rising in Germany for the last few years, since at least 2016.

Mediendienst Integration writes that a large majority of the stateless people living in Germany were living in Syria or Lebanon before they arrived in Germany. Many of them are Kurdish or Palestinian but had not acquired Syrian or Lebanese citizenship. At the end of February 2023, figures from the German parliament confirmed that around 37,500 stateless people in Germany had fled Syria and around 6,300 stateless people had fled Lebanon between 2014 and 2016.

Around a third of those who are stateless is living in Germany on a “Duldung,” that means they are in possession of a notice to leave Germany but are “tolerated” because without a citizenship it would be impossible for them to be sent back to a state since they officially don’t have one. In the world, there are many stateless people who were born and grew up in Ivory Coast, Myanmar and Bangladesh. Often for them, as a result of historical events, discrimination or poverty, those people have been unable to acquire citizenship, either for themselves, or their descendants.