Germany, that Eldorado for guest workers and emigrants from the Balkans, finally allows dual citizenship. After several delays, the law comes into force on Monday (July 1).
Apart from dual passports, the law stipulates that citizenship can be obtained after five years of residence (instead of the previous eight), in special cases it can already be obtained after three years. Children born in Germany will receive citizenship automatically if their parents have resided in Germany for at least five years.
The generation of old guest workers who went to West Germany in the fifties and sixties will not even have to pass a language test - it is enough to communicate in German.
Among the twelve million Auslanders in Germany, as many as 5,3 million have been there for over ten years. They often did not opt for a German passport precisely so that they would not become foreigners in their old homeland or because of the vicissitudes of the procedure of delisting from citizenship.
Admittedly, the right to a dual passport is already available to citizens of other EU member states, as well as countries such as Iran and Morocco that do not allow renunciation of citizenship.
And soon the majority of the 251.365 Serbian citizens living in Germany will have the same right. It should be added - they live legally, because no one knows the number of people who use tourist arrivals to work illegally.
Will there be a rush?
The fact that only 2022 of them took citizenship in 1.710 shows how little the German passport has been attractive to Serbian citizens lately.
So will the new law cause chaos, as some in Germany fear, expecting at least twice as many requests?
There will be no rush, Milan Čobanov, the head of the Central Council of Serbs in Germany, told our newsletter "Međuvreme" earlier.
"During the war, many did take citizenship, and at that time the Germans were generous with regard to the release from Yugoslav citizenship. That is, the Germans tolerated people keeping their old passports as well," said Chobanov.
What does a passport mean to someone?
Čobanov estimates that around 700.000 people of Serbian origin live in Germany, with one or the other passport, or both.
He added that today a good part of emigrants with Serbian citizenship are old guest workers, often pensioners who live between Serbia and Germany anyway. "Germany now wants to reward them with citizenship, but I don't know what that would mean for them."
"And people who came much later, after the wars, rarely have a positive attitude towards Germany." They live there, but they don't really live there. This is the attitude of many other foreigners as well," says Chobanov, who is also a member of the German Social Democrats.
"That's why I don't expect an onslaught on German citizenship because it seems to me that people will not rush to integrate in that way or get the right to participate in political life," he concluded.
Perhaps the number of Serbian citizens will also increase
However, it is not only about the right to vote. The German red passport, after the single-headed eagle, is the second strongest in the world - with it, you can travel visa-free to 190 countries or territories (with the Serbian one in 136).
There is one more thing - a foreigner with an unlimited residence permit in Germany loses all rights if he deregisters his German address for more than six months. And whoever takes citizenship can always return to Germany.
Who knows, maybe a reverse trend will emerge - that Serbs who once renounced their native citizenship for the sake of a German passport, now ask for a Serbian passport again.
*this text was first published in January 2024, and then supplemented with new data
