Germany expands access to citizenship; Find out if you have the right | Globalism

The new law was published in official diary German This Thursday (19) and effective from Friday. The bill was approved in Parliament on June 25 this year.

The law also states that the beneficiaries of the law apply for citizenship within 10 years – that is, until August 19, 2031. After this period, it will not be possible to apply for citizenship given these rules.

Lawyer Fabio Wehrlang, Hanover’s founder of German citizenship, says the amendment to the citizenship law compensates for the historic discrimination that occurred even after the German Basic Law of 1949 came into force.

“The new German Citizenship Law was an old desire of thousands of people who sought citizenship in their ancestral country and was hampered by the unjust, discriminatory and unconstitutional laws that Germany applied in analyzing their citizenship applications. Naturally, that is the case today. A historic day for all who fought for This right, which Parliament finally approved “

See the table below for the main beneficiaries of the change in the law:

“It is fortunate for our country that people want German citizenship, even though we stripped their ancestors of everything they had. It is not just a response, but a request for forgiveness with a deep sense of shame,” said Horst Seehofer, the German Minister of the Interior, In March 2021.

For the German Consulate in São Paulo, the new law still stands “A new legal framework for compensation for damages On the Nationality Law for Victims of National Socialist Persecution and Their Descendants. ”

“The bill covers the legal rights to naturalization of persons who have lost or not even obtained German citizenship due to National Socialist persecution proceedings and who are not covered by the right guaranteed by Article 116, paragraph 2, of the German Basic Law. The right to naturalization also applies to all descendants of the affected persons.”

Among the beneficiaries of the new law are children of Germans from a foreign person whose parents were not married, when they were born before July 1, 1993. To obtain citizenship, children need to have a strong connection to the state and language and go through a process called “facilitated naturalization”, established in 2013 . See other beneficiary cases in the table in this article.

In this case, until August 2019, it was necessary to demonstrate advanced knowledge of German (level C1). The level was then reduced to German Intermediate Level (B1). The person also had to undergo an interview at the consulate and, at the end of the process, answer in German a multiple-choice questionnaire with questions about the country (“naturalization test“).