"Obtaining German citizenship by deceiving official bodies, by bribery or threats does not exclude subsequent deprivation of citizenship" – that is a literal excerpt from the verdict of the Second Senate of the Constitutional Court. It was issued in the case of a certain Benjamin O. A native of Nigeria, naturalized in 2000, was two years later denied the right to call himself a German by the will of the administrative court of the glorious city of Pforzheim (Baden-Württemberg) on the grounds that a fake document was found in the foreigner's personal file among other documents. As a handwriting examination showed, a copy of the employment contract, intended to confirm the applicant's ability to provide for himself and his family, was taken from the document of his namesake and full namesake, who actually worked at a construction company in the city of Hanau. Unemployed at the time of joining the "German club," Benjamin O. now works honestly, and therefore considered it possible to appeal the decision of the Pforzheim court to the country's highest legal authority. And he lost.
The story with the Nigerian is illustrative in the context of the ongoing discussion about naturalization in recent months. Until now, lawmakers have mainly discussed plans to prevent "naturalization tourism" and the texts of questionnaires for future German citizens, requiring encyclopedic knowledge in the fields of history, culture, sports, politics, and so on, and so forth. Now, as the Nigerian's case shows, a new aspect of the topic has emerged – expulsion "from the Germans" for past sins. Yes, Benjamin O. is without any doubt a fraudster (and he is even lucky – they are not going to deport him from the country, but only strip him of his work permit; he will be given a residence permit and the opportunity, having reformed, to once again write a petition for citizenship) and he will answer for his fraud as he deserves. Only for some reason no one talks about the responsibility of the officials who at one time benevolently declared the Nigerian a German and accidentally stumbled upon the fake document during the consideration of a criminal case against a German citizen of Nigerian origin accused of drug trafficking. They, the officials, apparently are not guilty of anything. And they, like their colleagues at various levels and in various federal subjects, are fully within their legal right to reconsider their own recent decision.
The Constitutional Court's ruling in the case of Benjamin O. receives almost exclusively approving assessments. "Deception is not the best path to integration," declared Bavaria's Interior Minister Günter Beckstein. "Foreigners must correctly understand the signal given to them," believes Beckstein's colleague, the equally "black" head of the Interior Ministry of Brandenburg, Jörg Schönbohm, and calls on the relevant authorities to "more thoroughly and intensively check" both the documents and the very identity of an applicant for German citizenship. The unacceptability of fraud as a "way to live at the expense of the rest of society" is also stated in the press release of the federal Interior Ministry. Although, one might ask, what does living at anyone's expense have to do with it – after all, unemployment benefits and social assistance in Germany, thank God, are still paid regardless of national affiliation. However, maybe everything is still ahead?
In the chorus of ovations, complaints from the "left" side are barely audible. The chairman of the parliamentary internal affairs committee, Social Democrat Sebastian Edathy, reminds of the need to codify in law the rights of children in the event that their parents are deprived of German citizenship. Claudia Roth considers the ruling in the Nigerian's case "too harsh." "In such cases," says the leader of the Green party, "there is a danger of pushing a person into the unknown and the unreliability of stateless status."
The forcible conversion of a person (even a criminal) into a stateless person contradicts the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. "Die deutsche Staatsangehoerigkeit darf nicht entzogen werden" ("German citizenship cannot be taken away") – states Article 16 of this document. Yes, it was adopted in 1949. At that time, the practice of depriving undesirable individuals of citizenship for racist and political reasons, which existed during the Nazi era, had not yet faded from the lawmakers' memory. A long time ago, of course, but it is still the Basic Law to this day, which, by the way, a number of questions of the notorious questionnaire for those seeking naturalization are devoted to.
Between 2002 and 2004, the ranks of German citizens were increased by 422,431 migrants. Eighty-four of them had been stripped of their citizenship by the beginning of 2006. Also during this period, several tens of thousands of people ceased to be Germans, falling under the provisions of §25 of the Nationality Act (StAG), which states: "A German citizen loses German citizenship in all cases in which he voluntarily and by his own declaration accepts the citizenship of another country... In doing so, he loses all rights and obligations that exist for a German citizen... from that moment he is a foreigner and is not entitled to possess an identity card or passport of a German citizen. Documents are confiscated; the person must prove his identity using a passport of the 'new homeland'... As a foreigner, he needs to obtain a residence permit in Germany, issued by the Foreigners Authority, and a work permit, issued by the Employment Agency."
Until now, the most common cases of loss of German citizenship were precisely cases of deliberately acquiring a second passport, with the help of which its holder could prove his own nationality. The precedent with the Nigerian – the first and so far only case of appealing to the Constitutional Court regarding the illegal acquisition of a German citizen's identity card – makes it clear that one can be deprived of sole citizenship. Regardless of whether the negligent "former German" remains under the protection of some state or becomes a pariah without citizenship.
Any decision can be reviewed. And it doesn't matter when it was made – a year ago or ten. Now let us wait and see whether similar practice extends to adjusting naturalization decisions that will appear as a result of the new system based on filling out questionnaires – after all, the formulations approved as correct answers are subject to change.
Dynamics of naturalization for the period from 1994 to 2004, as given by the publication “Russkaya Germania” (more recent data have not been definitively systematized by the Federal Statistical Office):
Until 2000, there was a trend in the Federal Republic of Germany toward an increase in the number of persons acquiring citizenship: 1994 – 61.709 people, 1995 – 71.981, 1996 – 83.356, 1997 – 82.913, 1998 – 106.790, 1999 – 143.267, 2000 – 186.688.
After that, a trend toward a decline in the activity of applicants for a German passport became noticeable: 2001 – 178.098 people, 2002 – 154.547, 2003 – 140.731, 2004 – 127.153.