Change in nationality law: Anti-Semitic and racist offenders may not be naturalized, even in the case of juvenile sentences and less serious offenses.
Anyone who has been convicted of a racist or anti-Semitic crime can no longer be naturalized in Germany in the future.
After anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish incidents, this restriction was included in a list of changes in nationality law approved by the Federal Council at short notice. This already applied to serious crimes. Naturalization can now also be refused in the case of youth sentences and less serious offenses if the court found an anti-Semitic or racist motive as aggravating the punishment.
The changes also include the fact that those persecuted by the Nazi regime and their descendants can acquire German citizenship without any further conditions. Corresponding decrees of the Ministry of the Interior from 2019 will be placed on a legal basis and made more generous. Up until now, simplified naturalization was only possible if at least one parent was born before January 1, 2000. This restriction does not apply.
The application is free of charge, other nationalities can be retained. Those affected only have to prove that their ancestors were persecuted in Germany between 1933 and 1945 or belonged to groups that were persecuted at the time. This can affect the descendants of Jews, Sinti and Roma as well as the descendants of mentally ill people or political opponents of the National Socialists.
The Federal Council also approved a regulation that provides for the storage of all relevant data relating to immigration law in a nationwide register. In future, the result of the authenticity check of submitted documents will also be recorded centrally in the central foreigner register. The Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Stephan Mayer (CSU), assured that sensitive information from asylum procedures – for example on political activities or sexual orientation – was “categorically excluded” from being transmitted to third countries.
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