'Scrapping turbo citizenship sends a message to immigrants... the wrong message'

Photo by Anete Lūsiņa on Unsplash

If you’ve recently scrolled through any immigrant-heavy corner of social media, you’ve probably spotted a familiar post or five: after years of calling Germany home and battling bureaucracy, the post’s author is finally holding up that hard-earned burgundy passport.

With a steady rise in naturalisations, it’s no wonder that LinkedIn and co. are brimming with proud declarations of becoming German. In 2024, a record 291,955 foreigners received a German passport, up 23 percent from the previous year, according to statistics published in June.

But if Germany’s newly formed government has its way, that upward trend may soon stall.

Following its current summer break, the CDU/CSU–SPD coalition is likely to officially scrap the so-called “turbo” naturalisation route. Introduced into law in mid-2024, the provision has allowed candidates with “exceptional integration status” - C1-level German and civic contributions like volunteer work with a Verein - to apply for citizenship after just three years.

Yet according to Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and other CDU/CSU politicians, the fast-track offering sent the wrong signal. It even “encouraged migration beyond desired levels,” Dobrindt said in a speech to the Bundestag on June 27th when arguing for its repeal.

“Citizenship should be a stabilising factor for our society. The introduction of turbo-naturalisation was the opposite: it has driven polarisation in our country,” he claimed.

Does the offer of a German passport—even via an accelerated path—actually attract many migrants who aren’t already building a life in Germany? And even if it did cause a few extra immigrants to set their sights on the Bundesrepublik, aren’t many of them the highly skilled workers the current coalition claims it so urgently needs?

A symbolic move

The turbo-passport, at least at first, appeared to be more of a welcoming emblem for any well-integrated migrant than a mighty lever opening the floodgates for citizenship applications. Only seven percent of the Pässe handed out in 2024 came from turbo-naturalisations.

Most of the other passport recipients were long-term residents whose lives are now rooted in Germany. Syrians made up the largest group of all the naturalisations, accounting for 83,000 of the total, or nearly 28 percent. The second largest group were Turks, who comprised 22,525 of new passport holders, or 8 percent.

The rise in new German citizens is also largely thanks to other much-needed liberalisations in naturalisation policy — key reforms introduced by the previous ‘traffic light’ coalition that are expected to stay in place under the current government.

Germany lifted its long-standing ban on dual citizenship in June 2024, opening the door for thousands who had lived and worked in the Bundesrepublik for years but were reluctant to apply for a German passport because it meant giving up their original nationality. At the same time, the country reduced its naturalisation requisite from eight to five years and kept the language requirement at a doable B1 level. These changes went a long way toward closing the gap between how deeply rooted many immigrants already are in Germany and the formal recognition they receive from the state.

Even as the turbo path is now on the chopping block, Germany’s overhauled naturalisation rules still stand out as progressive compared to many of its neighbours. In most cases, you’ll need to live in Austria for at least a full decade before being handed a passport, while in Denmark you have to clock in nine full years of residency.

Singling out the fast-track route - one of the least dramatic pieces of the immigration reform - appears to be little more than a symbolic concession to conservative coalition members eager to project a tougher stance on migration. This may help explain why the policy has been so harshly criticised, and misleadingly conflated with unrelated measures like reintroducing border checks for non-EU nationals without valid documents and shortening the deportation window for rejected asylum seekers to just 28 days.

Yet figures like Alexander Dobrindt and other CDU/CSU politicians have grouped all of these actions together, treating the elimination of "Turbo-Einbürgerung" as part of a broader migration crackdown. They argue that the expedited path to citizenship may have inadvertently encouraged more irregular migrants or asylum seekers to come, hoping to get citizenship faster.

The fast-track route “not only has an impact on legal migration, but also on illegal migration in particular,” Dobrindt said in his speech.

The passport isn’t the barrier

In truth, scrapping the turbo option runs counter to one of the current coalition’s core objectives—the very rationale behind introducing it in the first place. The government has repeatedly emphasised its goal of attracting skilled labour, a priority made all the more urgent by Germany’s acute shortages in fields ranging from IT and healthcare to the construction industry.

Germany is grappling with shortages across 163 officially designated bottleneck occupations as of May, according to the Federal Employment Agency.

In 2024, the number of unfilled positions requiring qualified professionals was estimated at 487,000, a figure which the German Economic Institute (IW) recently stated could surge to 768,000 by 2028.

With this growing shortage in mind, Herbert Brücker from the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) recently told The Rheinische Post that "the withdrawal of accelerated naturalisation negatively affects precisely the group of people we want in Germany…Naturalisation after three years mainly applies to highly qualified migrants with high incomes.”

Dobrindt wasn’t wrong to suggest that naturalisation should represent the culmination of an integration journey. But if an immigrant is truly motivated to make that happen after three years, more power to them.

It’s hardly surprising that anyone who comes to Germany - and eventually considers applying for citizenship, whether after three years or 13 - must first have a reason to stay.

People are far more likely to put down roots when they feel genuinely welcomed and can see a clear path forward. But for many long-term migrants, whether they’re students, skilled workers, or something in between, that path can be anything but straightforward. A lot of them have to deal with complicated residence permits that are often temporary and need to be renewed every year or two, making it hard to feel settled.

The recognition of foreign qualifications remains sluggish and uneven across states, forcing many highly trained professionals into jobs far below their level of education and expertise. The added burden of documentation delays, shifting requirements, and a patchwork of local immigration offices with varying interpretations of national rules can make long-term planning feel like a shot in the dark.

While a German passport offers an added layer of security, it shouldn't be the only form of stability. Residents should have solid ground to stand on well before they reach the point of naturalisation. That could be through expanded and streamlined pathways to permanent residency, or a more predictable system - whether turbo or not - that encourages long-term integration from the outset.

Rachel Stern is a freelance journalist who has lived in Berlin for the past 13 years. She has written for outlets including Bloomberg and The Christian Science Monitor and most recently completed a six-year stint as managing editor of the expat website The Local Germany. A graduate of the Columbia Journalism School, she hails from California.

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