Germany’s plan would ease the path to citizenship, but not without a fight
The young, well-educated and motivated José Leonardo Cabrera Barroso is exactly the kind of immigrant that the government says Germany needs.
Originally from Venezuela, he settled in Germany, learned the language and obtained his German medical license. At the age of 34 he specializes as a trauma surgeon in a hospital in the northern port city of Hamburg. It took him a whopping six years — and because of his expertise, he was allowed to apply for citizenship earlier than the eight years required for most others.
“For me, this date was a must,” he said at the champagne reception in Hamburg following his citizenship ceremony in February. “After all the work I’ve done to get here, I finally feel like I can celebrate.”
But if his path to becoming a German citizen wasn’t easy, it wasn’t worth making that process easier for others who want to achieve the same dream.
After months of political bickering, the government this month presented a plan to make it easier and faster for working immigrants to become citizens, saving time for people with special skills like Dr. Cabrera Barroso is shortened to just three years.
The changes, supporters argue, are urgently needed to accommodate an aging population and a shortage of both skilled and unskilled workers. Given the majority that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government has in parliament, the new law is expected to be passed this summer.
But before then, even within the government – and certainly among its conservative opponents – the proposals have sparked a heartbreaking debate over a fundamental question: is Germany a land of immigrants?
On the ground, the answer is clear. Germany is more densely populated than ever – thanks to migration, an additional 1.1 million people lived in the country at the end of 2022, now down from 84.3 million people.
One in four Germans has at least one of their grandparents born abroad. More than 18 percent of people living in Germany were not born there.
In Frankfurt and some other large cities, residents with a migration background are in the majority. People with non-German sounding names run cities, universities and hospitals. The German couple who invented the Pfizer Covid vaccine have Turkish roots. Cem Ozdemir, a German-born Green politician whose parents came from Turkey, is one of the most popular ministers in the current government. Two out of three governing parties are led by men born in Iran.
Many of those changes have only accelerated since reunification 33 years ago, but many Germans still fail to recognize the diversification of their country.
“The opposition will not accept or admit that we are a nation of immigrants; they actually want to hide from reality,” says Bijan Djir-Sarai, who came to Germany from Iran at the age of 11 and is now secretary general of the Free Democratic Party, which is part of the governing coalition.
The changes to the citizenship law are part of a wider set of proposals that will also make it easier for skilled workers to settle in Germany and for well-integrated immigrants to stay.
In addition to shortening the time an immigrant must live in the country to apply, the plan will allow people to keep their original citizenship and make language requirements less onerous for older immigrants.
The proposals are the most sweeping since 1999, when for the first time in modern German history people who were not born of German parents could obtain German citizenship under certain conditions.
Before then, it was virtually impossible to become a German without proving German ancestry, a situation especially fraught for the nearly one million Turkish citizens who began coming to Germany in the 1960s to help as “guest workers” and their descendants rebuild the economy.
Since the government announced its plans in November, the Conservative opposition has firmly opposed the relaxation of citizenship requirements.
Those arguments resonated with some Germans at a time when migration remains a fixation of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, which has risen in polls and dragged mainstream opposition Christian Democrats to the right.
“Hocking citizenship does not promote integration, but has the opposite effect and will have a knock-on effect on illegal migration,” Alexander Dobrindt, the parliamentary leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, told the mass-market tabloid Bild.
Also, not everyone who has already gone through the longer, tedious process agrees with easing the requirements.
“I think you have to make sure it’s not given away too easily,” says 34-year-old Mohammed Basheer, who came to Germany from Syria eight years ago and was one of about 200 immigrants who received their citizenship this year during the ornate Renaissance Revival City Hall Hamburg. “I had to fight very hard for it.”
During the months-long negotiations, the smallest and most conservative party in the governing coalition fought for changes to ensure applicants are self-sufficient and — with few exceptions — not dependent on Social Security benefits.
“If we want society to accept immigration reform, we also need to talk about things like control, regulation and, if necessary, repatriation,” said Mr. Djir-Sarai, acknowledging the opposition’s concerns. “It’s just part of it.”
Yet surveys show that more than two-thirds of Germans believe changes that facilitate immigration are needed to alleviate the rampant shortage of skilled workers, according to a recent poll. Industry; employers, such as the German Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises; and economists welcome the changes, seeing them as a way to attract skilled workers.
Petra Bendel, who researches migration and integration at Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nurnberg, thinks the changes will not only attract new workers, but will also be crucial for the integration of immigrants already living in Germany.
“The problem is that we are excluding a very large number of people who have been part of us for a long time, but who still do not have full citizenship and are therefore also excluded from full political participation,” she said.
Although it naturalized the fifth largest number of people in the European Union in 2020, the most recent year for which such numbers are available, Germany ranks relatively poorly in terms of naturalizing permanent residents: 19th out of 27 EU member statesone place lower than Hungary.
“Other European countries,” Professor Bendel noted, “naturalize much more quickly, usually after five years and not after eight, which is why we ended up in the bottom third.”
In the coming weeks, the bill will be submitted to Germany’s 18 states for comment before being sent back to the cabinet for approval. The government hopes to get it into parliament for discussion and a vote before lawmakers break for summer in early July, though the vote could be postponed until they meet again in September.
For some, like Bonnie Cheng, 28, a portrait photographer in Berlin, the changes are welcome, when it’s too late. She had to give up her Hong Kong citizenship when she became German last year.
Ms. Cheng is happy that others are not faced with the same choice. If she ever hesitated to become a German, she said, it was when she realized she would be the only one in her family with a different citizenship.
“If you want people to feel integrated,” she said, “don’t tear apart their identity.”