The conservative opposition is criticizing the socially liberal administration of Germany for its efforts to relax the requirements for getting citizenship in the most populous nation of the European Union.
Germany has long since transformed into “the land of hope” for many, according to Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and it’s a wonderful thing when those who have established roots there decide to apply for citizenship.
Scholz asserted that Germany needs better laws to allow for the naturalization of all these outstanding people.
The three-party coalition of Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats, the greens, and the pro-business Free Democrats decided to take on a number of modernizing reforms when it assumed power last December, and the overhaul of citizenship laws is one of them. On Friday, the Interior Ministry declared that a draft of the law is “almost ready.”
According to the coalition agreement from last year, rather than the current eight or six years, individuals will be eligible for German citizenship after five years, or three years in the case of “special integration accomplishments.” If one parent has been a legal resident for five years, the child born in Germany would automatically become a citizen.
Additionally, the government seeks to remove limitations on having two citizenships. There are certain exceptions, but generally speaking, when a person becomes a German citizen, they have to renounce their prior nationality, with the exception of Switzerland and members of the European Union.
Reduced citizenship eligibility wait times, according to interior minister Nancy Faeser, are “an incentive for integration.”
She stated on Friday that the goal is to portray the truth. “Our nation is diverse and immigrant-heavy, and I believe that the law should reflect that.”
According to official figures, 131,600 persons, or 25% of those from other EU nations, became German citizens in 2017. Due in part to an increase in the number of Syrians who were naturalized, the number was 20% higher than the previous year. Around 84 million people live in Germany as a whole.
Plans to liberalize citizenship laws are rejected by the main center-right opposition Union bloc.
Senior conservative lawmaker Alexander Dobrindt told the daily Bild on Saturday that “selling off German citizenship cheap doesn’t encourage integration — it aims for exactly the opposite and will trigger additional ‘pull effects’ for illegal migration.”
For someone to become eligible for citizenship, “five years is a very, very little time,” Union chief whip Thorsten Frei told ZDF television.
A prohibition on doctors “promoting” abortion services has been lifted from Germany’s penal law, among other liberalizing initiatives. It has lowered the voting age requirement from 18 to 16 for elections to the European Parliament and aims to do the same for national elections.
Additionally, it wants to replace the 40-year-old “self-determination law” with a new one that would do away with the requirement that transsexuals obtain a psychological evaluation and court approval before legally changing their gender. Additionally, it aims to legalize the sale of cannabis to adults for recreational use in a regulated market and decriminalize the possession of small amounts of the drug.
Some of the proposals might encounter opposition in the upper house of parliament, which represents Germany’s 16 state governments and where Scholz’s coalition lacks a majority. To make that happen this week, it had to water down some of the changes to unemployment benefits.
