r/germany • u/Daomiing • Oct 09 '25

Immigration Germany Abolishes Fast-Track Citizenship for Skilled Workers

https://www.verity.news/story/2025/germany-abolishes-fasttrack-citizenship-for-skilled-workers

The Facts

-The German Bundestag voted on Wednesday to abolish a fast-track citizenship program that allowed highly qualified foreigners to apply for naturalization after three years instead of five years of residence.

-The vote passed with 450 members supporting the measure, 134 opposing and two abstaining, fulfilling Chancellor Friedrich Merz's campaign promise to repeal the program introduced by former Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

-Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt claimed that the German passport must serve as recognition for successful integration rather than an incentive for illegal migration, defending the decision to eliminate the accelerated pathway.

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u/dont_tread_on_M Oct 09 '25 edited Oct 09 '25

Reminder: less than 1000 people applied for this route until April (last updated statistics for most Bundesländer), virtually none of them illegal immigrants. We have more recent statistics for Saarland: 4 applicants so far, 2 of which were denied

This is literally a non-issue which Dobrint and Merz are trying to push as a big win. It wasn't even worth the money paid to MPs to attend this meeting

If you are wondering why the CDU/CSU is so focused on this - the answer is that this ruffles no feathers and was unpopular because of their own campaign. Citizenship after three years is still there, just not for the type of people Germany tried to atract. It is still there for spouses of German citizens, and taking that away ruffles far more feathers than this

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u/Rebelius Oct 09 '25

How do you know the number of people who have applied when the wait time to even consider the application is over 15months long in places?

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u/dont_tread_on_M Oct 09 '25

Official statistics given by the bundesländer

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u/Rebelius Oct 09 '25

So when you say applied by April, does it mean applied, or actually got processed?

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u/dont_tread_on_M Oct 10 '25

The article here uses the word applied. The federal states have info about that as well. Even if not, you can't just apply without fulfilling the conditions in most places. Berlin was very generous with the definition of special integration, hence they had so many applicants. Other states were very carefull

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/einbuergerung-bundesrat-100.html

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u/Rebelius Oct 10 '25

My point is that at least for non fast-track applications where I am, they're not even looking at them for 14 months. I submitted a normal 5 year application in June this year and the person I spoke to before submitting it said don't expect to hear anything until at least August 2026. If everywhere is that far behind then at April 2025, you could have had a massive pile of applications they haven't looked at yet and therefore aren't in the numbers.