Record Naturalizations in Germany Amid Intense Debate About Immigration Policy

Germany’s Federal Statistical Office said on June 3 the country naturalized 332,500 people in 2025, marking the fifth consecutive year the country broke its annual record for naturalizations.

The figure represented a 14 percent increase from 2024, when 291,955 people were naturalized, itself a 46 percent rise over the previous year. Syrians and Turks are the two largest groups to have acquired citizenship.

According to provisional results, 90 percent of the 371,100 naturalization procedures completed in 2025 were successful. Destatis reported a total of 467,400 citizenship applications submitted over the course of the year.

In 5 percent of cases, applicants chose to withdraw their application. Around 3 percent of applications were rejected, while another 3 percent ended for other reasons, such as the death of the applicant or their relocation abroad.

Between 85 percent and 98 percent of people who acquire German citizenship also choose to keep their original nationality, according to a survey by the Mediendienst Integration research group.

Prior to reforms, only citizens of other EU member states and Switzerland were permitted to retain their original nationality.

The figures have fueled an ongoing debate over immigration policy and assimilation.

Criticism of Expanded Immigration

The Alternative for German (AfD) party has sharply criticized the Merz government’s record on immigration, accusing it of continuing the policies of the previous coalition.

“An immediate halt to naturalisations is needed,” AfD leader Alice Weidel wrote on X, reacting to the Federal Statistical Office report.

Since winning 20.8 percent of the vote in the February 2025 federal election, the AfD has surged in the polls and now stands at roughly 28 percent. The party has become Germany’s most popular political force, reaching the highest level of support in its history.

René Springer, a member of the Bundestag, Germany’s federal parliament, and leader of the AfD section in Brandenburg, told The Epoch Times that migration has produced “a decline in quality of life, the erosion of traditional social systems, and a loss of trust in the authorities.”

According to a 2024 report by the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, around 21.2 million people in Germany, both citizens and noncitizens, have a migration background, out of a total population of 82.8 million.

Of this group, 40 percent originate from outside Europe, representing roughly 10 percent of the overall population. Turkish immigrants constitute the largest group among those with a migration background, accounting for 12.2 percent of those with a foreign country of origin.

The debate has also acquired a transatlantic dimension. The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, released in December 2025, warned that Europe could be “unrecognizable in 20 years or less” if current immigration trends continue, and that this prospect raised “an open question” about whether those countries would continue to view their alliance with the United States as their predecessors had.

Springer said Washington’s concerns were warranted. “It is clear that Germany will be a different country if its population consists of people from other cultures and ethnic groups,” he said. “The migration policies of Western governments thus pose a genuine risk to both domestic and foreign policy.”

New Citizenship Law, Consequences

The surge is largely attributed by the Federal Statistical Office to the Act on the Modernization of Citizenship Law (StaRModG), passed by the then-ruling coalition of the SPD, Greens, and FDP under former Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Jan. 19, 2024, that entered into force in June of that year.

The legislation cut the standard residency requirement for naturalization from eight years to five, and lifted longstanding restrictions on dual citizenship.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) architect of the reform, said it brought Germany in line with European neighbors and was essential to attracting the skilled workers Germany’s aging economy needs.

The government noted at the time that more than 5.3 million long-term residents, people who had lived in Germany for at least a decade, remained without citizenship.

Springer, however, rejected the skilled-worker justification. “We see no evidence that the new citizenship law will attract skilled workers, nor is there any evidence that the social consequences of this cultural shift must be accepted in order to attract said skilled workers,” he said. “It is a risky policy that has, in fact, long since failed.”

More Likely to be Unemployed

According to data from the Federal Employment Agency published in April 2025, as of September 2024, Germany had 2.8 million unemployed people. Of these, 1.5 million (54 percent) had a migration background, and 1.1 million (39 percent) did not hold German citizenship. Non-Germans represent approximately 16 percent of the total population.

Among the long-term unemployed, defined as those out of work for two or more years, people with a migration background also made up a majority, at 52 percent of the 881,000 recorded.

The educational gap is equally pronounced: While 51 percent of unemployed German nationals lacked a completed vocational qualification, the figure stood at 82 percent among non-Germans and reached 91 percent among those from the main countries of asylum origin.

Springer, who commissioned the Federal Employment Agency analysis, was unequivocal: “Anyone who has been in Germany for years without a vocational qualification or a job is not a skilled-worker potential, but a permanent burden on our social system.”

The German Institute for Employment Research (IAB) also reported in July 2025 that the number of people with a migration background whose income comes primarily from means-tested welfare benefits more than doubled between 2010 and 2023, rising from 1.2 million to 2.1 million, driven mainly by the post-2015 refugee influx under former Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In 2024, only 53,000 out of 610,000 residence titles granted to third-country nationals were employment-related, according to research published by Bocconi University’s Institute for European Policy, underscoring that the large majority of new arrivals enter through humanitarian rather than labor channels.

The naturalization surge has also intensified a parallel debate over crime.

According to the Federal Criminal Police Office’s Police Crime Statistics, non-German nationals, while roughly 16 percent of the population, accounted for approximately 43 percent of all crime suspects in 2024 and for a disproportionate share of violent crime suspects.

A Council of Europe SPACE I report based on 2024 data, states that foreign nationals represent 49 percent of Germany’s prison population.

A Partial Rollback Under Merz

Günter Krings, an interior-affairs expert for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), called for the citizenship law to be amended. “The fact that new naturalizations on such a scale lead to dual citizenship is not a good development,” Krings said after the figures were released. “We have to respond with legislation here.”

He said there is an “urgent need for action.”

The CDU/CSU (Christian Social Union) parliamentary group already called in May for a further tightening of citizenship rules.

Since taking office following the February 2025 election, the CDU/CSU–SPD coalition under Chancellor Friedrich Merz has moved to roll back the 2024 reform. In October 2025, the Bundestag voted 450 to 134 to abolish the fast-track, three-year naturalization route that had been open to exceptionally well-integrated applicants.

“More still needs to be done,” said Alexander Throm (CDU), the CDU/CSU group’s spokesman on internal affairs.

“It would still be right to extend the naturalization period back to eight years and to abolish the general acceptance of dual citizenship,” Throm said. But that had “unfortunately” proved impossible in the coalition negotiations with the SPD, he said.

SPD, Greens Hail Integration Success

Last month, the SPD brushed off the criticism. “We are working together excellently with the CDU/CSU on the basis of the coalition agreement,” said Sebastian Fiedler, the SPD parliamentary group’s spokesperson on internal affairs. “I am pleased that, as part of this cooperation, we have legally anchored dual citizenship as a successful model.”

Fiedler emphasized that naturalization in Germany remains subject to strict conditions: applicants must have a clean criminal record, demonstrate German language proficiency, be able to support themselves financially, and pass the naturalization test.

“In short: Only well-integrated people can become German citizens,” he said. “These figures are therefore good for all of us: good for the labor market, the social security system, and for our social cohesion.”

He added that anyone who abuses the naturalization process through fraud is not only committing a crime but also risks losing their German citizenship and being temporarily barred from reapplying.

Following the release of the naturalization figures this week, other parties on the left welcomed the numbers.

Filiz Polat, the Greens’ parliamentary secretary, called them a “success story” for the citizenship law reform that the then-governing coalition passed in 2024. “Anyone who applies for citizenship is consciously choosing our country,” Polat said.

She warned against changing the law again, saying that doing so would send “a false signal to people who are already part of our society” and would “foster insecurity and division.”

The Left Party called the naturalization figures “good news.” The numbers represent 332,500 people who “have been part of this society for years,” said Left Party politician Ferat Kocak. “Now they can finally help shape it, too.”