"It is no longer possible to leave the naturalization process to take its own course," said the government commissioner for migration and integration, Maria Böhmer. "Our task is to help those who would like to obtain a German passport. First of all, by giving them the opportunity to participate in a special course on German culture and history, and to learn modern democratic values." With such a statement, the commissioner merely repeated what the "black" interior ministers had so insistently said a week earlier at their conference in Koblenz.
The Bavarian minister Günther Beckstein, who chaired the conference, called naturalization "a symbol of the successful completion of integration, impossible without additional education," and urged that everything be done to combat the creation of "parallel worlds" in Germany. At the time, the conservatives' ideas did not meet with immediate, unconditional support from their Social Democratic colleagues in the interior ministry. "The existence of 'parallel worlds' is a reality, but it does not seem dramatic to me," stressed the minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Karl Peter Bruch. "After all, how many Germans living in America feel German while being U.S. citizens! That is normal!" Bruch's colleagues, the Social Democrats from Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia, also opposed a compulsory course on the "fundamentals of state and law."
But a week passed, marked by the "cartoon scandal," and the next arrived under the same theme—and now the central authorities are caught up in the worldwide discussion about Christian, Muslim, and other values. As a result, they have succumbed to the charm of the old idea of "leading German culture," which, according to Wolfgang Bosbach, deputy head of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, was unjustly ostracized in 2000. In those distant "red-green" times, it was "excessively emotionally charged" and "erroneously interpreted as an idea of forced Germanization." Today, in the sensible (by some convictions) era of the grand coalition, the topic is viewed more calmly. On the merits. From the standpoint of a bureaucracy that respects all kinds of regulations. There will apparently be not too many such regulations—only four in number—designed to save Germany's democratic society from the infiltration of those unworthy of being called Germans.
First, successfully passing a language exam (with a grade, as both Bosbach and Böhmer emphasize, "above average"). Second, participation in a special course on the fundamentals of the Constitution, the legal and governmental system of the Federal Republic of Germany (also ending with an exam). Third, a very detailed questionnaire on membership (current or previous) in terrorist organizations or support for them. Fourth, a detailed report on the personality of the citizenship applicant by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which, according to Günther Beckstein, can still be rechecked by "direct questions" from the relevant official—what if the potential German is not formally a member of any illegal association, but in his soul is a fundamentalist?
Honestly, I don't know how I would answer such "direct questions." Most likely, I would stupidly blush. Of course, I was lucky that in the "pre-reform" time I only had to sign a paper with a brief, very condensed summary of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic. Like, "I agree." However, even now it would hardly be different. As Beckstein says, the naturalization procedure will "provide for options": "No one is going to subject a foreign professor who has lived in Germany for years to the same checks as a worker who speaks German poorly or an unemployed person." (Strange, however: a professor, perhaps, will lie more cleverly than a worker.) But the main thing, of course, in the idea of unifying rules is the fight against "naturalization tourism." In some federal states, becoming a German is easier than in others! The government heeded this warning from Beckstein. Wolfgang Bosbach called for resisting admission "into citizens of the state," and he was supported in his fight against "unjustified speed in processing cases" by Fritz Rudolf Körper, deputy head of the Social Democratic parliamentary group in the federal parliament.
There is no dispute that the situation varies greatly from state to state. What's more, even in different districts of one Berlin, waiting times and even the set of required documents are sometimes incomparable. But isn't this an indicator of the level of professionalism of officials, some of whom have mastered the art of social and psychological testing (and, to put it bluntly, know how to work normally), while others simply sit out their not-so-highly-paid post in an office, completely unconcerned about people's fates? For the sake of genuine unification, it would actually be worth sending the bureaucratic fraternity for unified retraining. But for now, retraining is planned for applicants for German citizenship. The relevant classes should begin this spring at "folk high schools."
It is impossible to find any logical explanation for this initiative. Were the mandatory language courses, through the mill of which newly arrived foreigners in Germany pass, not enough? Between them and the moment of filing an application "I want to be a German" lie years, sometimes decades, during which, if a person has not learned German, no additional lessons will help! Has he not absorbed the democratic values enshrined in the Basic Law of the FRG? Then he will not absorb them, except that he will learn the correct answers to tricky questions about the relationship between men and women in the European family, and after passing the exam, in the best traditions of students of all times and peoples, will forget by the next morning what he swore to.
The only rationale for introducing new courses—and even that with a stretch—is financial. Since, as Wolfgang Bosbach says, "a certain number of course hours the citizenship applicant will have to pay for himself; after all, naturalization is not joining a hobby club." With a stretch—because, first, joining a club also costs money; second, the processing fee is already not small; and third, because additional levies will inevitably provoke a round of debate about new subsidies for foreigners on social welfare.
"I strongly doubt the reasonableness of another formal course for people who have lived in Germany for 10–15 years," comments Berlin's senator for internal affairs, Ehrhart Körting. "Democracy should be demonstrated not by complicating the citizenship procedure, but by making our state itself more attractive to immigrants." The capital, as is known, on the contrary, simplifies the naturalization procedure. And provincials, primarily from the "black" states, would, it seems, be interested to learn about the results of an experiment conducted by Dutch television.
One of the central channels recently invited completely native residents to appear on air and asked them to answer questions from a questionnaire that the Royal Immigration Service plans to introduce for citizenship applicants. And so—no one could guess what the main historical role of William of Orange was, how to properly congratulate a neighbor on a newborn, and into which garbage bin to throw defective neon tubes! If residents of the Netherlands were to be selected by these criteria, the country would become depopulated.
So the whole discussion about citizenship—and on the background of Baden-Württemberg protests against loyalty checks on Muslims living in the country and government statements about simplifying deportation—brings to mind an old saying, which, paraphrasing, makes one want to say: becoming a German is not a misfortune; the worry is how not to get lost among them.