Bhurishravas wrote:
Thank you for the info.
I fund this on wiki.- "Children of foreigners born on German soil are now granted German citizenship automatically if the parent has been in Germany for at least eight years as a legal immigrant."
Also there is some difference between granting citizenship and `becoming german`, if you get what I mean. There are about 3 million turks in Germany? What is their status? Some info on this would be nice. Thanks in advance.
This is what I found from Wiki:
"For decades Turkish citizens in Germany were unable to become German citizens because of the traditional German construct of "nationhood". The legal notion of citizenship was based on "blood ties" of a German parent (jus sanguinis) – as opposed to citizenship based on country of birth and residence (jus soli). This adhered to the political notion that Germany was not a country of immigration.[60] For this reason, only those who were of partial Turkish origin (and had one parent who was ethnically German) could obtain German citizenship.
In 1990 Germany's citizenship law was somewhat relaxed with the introduction of the Foreigner's Law; this gave Turkish workers the right to apply for a permanent residency permit after eight years of living in the country.[61] In regards to people of Turkish origin born in Germany, who were also legally "foreign", they were given the right to acquire German citizenship at the age of eighteen, provided that they gave up their Turkish citizenship. Hence, they were deprived of the right to hold dual citizenship because it would increase the Turkish population in the country."
I do not see anywhere that citizenship is granted automatically to a 5th or 6th generation Turkish citizen living in Germany. They have to apply, prove that they know adequate German, and are without a criminal record. Then they may get German citizenship. Most of my Indian friends did not opt for German citizenship because the society just would not accept them as Germans, however long they stayed. So, a permanent residence was as good as it went. It is said you can never become a German, but you could hold a German passport. This is not the case with UK or USA,where most Indians who are in the country for a long time opt for citizenship.
Gautam