Thursday, October 9
Germany ends “turbo-citizenship” as Merz introduces new restrictions
How quickly things can change. Just over two years ago, news broke that Germany’s traffic-light coalition government of the SPD, Greens and FDP was planning to relax citizenship laws, cutting the time required to become a naturalised German citizen to just three years. The law went into effect last summer, and the country quickly set a record for new passports handed out. Since then, however, the government has collapsed, the CDU are back in charge (with the SPD playing second fiddle), and life is getting tougher for those of us who moved here from abroad.
Votes from the CDU and AfD have now brought down the regulation, meaning that immigrants will once again need to wait five years before they can obtain a German passport. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) appeared proud of his party’s actions. “The German passport,” he said, “must be recognition of successful integration, not an incentive for illegal migration.”
Across the political spectrum, the Greens and the Left Party strongly criticised the move, calling it “backward-looking”. Neukölln’s own Ferat Koçak of Die Linke took particular aim at the CDU and CSU, telling them: “With your migration policy, you are making the AfD’s hatred socially acceptable.”
