Dual citizenship opens for Turks in Germany

Canan Bayram, an MP from the Green Party, a coalition government partner, said in a statement that they intend to enact the law that will provide the opportunity for dual citizenship that Turks in Germany have been waiting for a long time.

Bayram said: “I am hopeful, a very good law has been prepared. We will make the lives of many of our people easier. I really see this as a lawyer too. Not being able to benefit from this dual citizenship creates problems in people’s lives,” he said.

Explaining that the discriminatory implementation of the current law has received backlash for many years, and that this regulation especially discriminates against Turks, Bayram said: “(Dual citizenship) is possible for anyone who comes from the European Union, it is possible when you are an American or a citizen of another country. So the current law was insufficient. Some people did not allow it. But at that time it was known as Türkengesetz (law for the Turks). This was actually a law that excluded Turks, we are ending it now, we are changing it.”

Mikolaj Ciechanowicz, director of the German Integration Foundation (Deutschlandstiftung Integration), which specializes in migration issues, stressed that the reform of immigration and citizenship laws is a late but very important step.

Ciechanowicz recalled that many immigrants living in Germany for a long time, even those born and raised in this country, have so far not acquired German citizenship in order not to lose citizenship of the country of origin, and said that this burden will be removed with the new legal regulation.

Ciechanowicz stated that German citizenship will strengthen immigrants’ sense of belonging to Germany and will bring much more success for immigrants, noting that the concept of integration is in favor of using the concept of participation in the sense of embracing immigrants to that the concept of integration is not understood as a mandatory integration.

Ciechanowicz said: “A greater participation of immigrants in social life will, of course, bring their participation in politics. All of these issues are within the scope of this reform,” he said.

Mikolaj Ciechanowicz recalled that Germany has a serious shortage of skilled labor and underlined the importance of modernizing immigration and citizenship law in this regard.

The German expert said: “This issue is of vital importance to Germany, and migration should be facilitated as much as possible in accordance with the objectives. It also includes reforms to the government’s immigration and citizenship law. Everyone is aware of the shortage of skilled labor in Germany. This means that our well-being and future depend on managing migration in accordance with our objectives.” he performed the assessment of it.

COMING UP TO MINISTRY COMMITTEE WEEK

Led by Prime Minister Olaf Scholz, the coalition government of the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party plans to bring the new citizenship law to Cabinet in the coming weeks and then send it to the Bundestag for approval.
In Germany, which has a population of 84 million, at least 9 million foreign citizens do not have German citizenship despite living in the country for many years.

Germany’s strict regulations on naturalization and lengthy bureaucratic procedures are considered one of the most important reasons for this.

A significant part of the more than 3 million Turkish citizens living in Germany did not want to take this step, as current law requires renouncing Turkish citizenship in order to obtain German citizenship. (AA)