Germany's growing numbers of 'new citizens' prepare to vote

Germany's upcoming federal elections will have more naturalized new citizens eligible to vote than any election in the country's history.

Surveys show that between 2021 and 2023, over half a million people received German citizenship and are therefore eligible to vote in their first federal election on Sunday.

A big reason for this is due to the more than one million refugees who entered the country almost 10 years ago, says Zeynep Yanaşmayan, head of the migration department at the DeZIM center for integration and migration research. 

"This is basically coming from Syrian refugees who've arrived in 2015/2016 and who are now becoming eligible for German citizenship and now acquiring it," she tells CGTN. "So there has been an increase in their numbers, which then increases the overall numbers [of new citizens]."

For many years, German citizenship required one to have lived in the country for eight years, speak a certain level of the German language and be able to work. 

Last summer, these regulations were eased, lowering the residency requirements and also allowing for dual nationalities, expanding the traditional demographics of the voting population.

One in eight of the electorate

According to official figures, voters with immigrant backgrounds make up about 12 percent of the German electorate. Many are descended from Turkish 'guest-workers', but increasing numbers are coming from elsewhere.  

Papitchaya Swartz is now one of them. Originally from Thailand, she came to Germany with her husband in 2019 and was determined to become German like her husband and their two children.

"This is my first time," she tells CGTN about voting in Sunday's election. "I am very excited to shape my own future – and the future of my children, their stability and their security, lay ahead with the incoming government."

The issues that concern her are the environment and the rise of far-right anti-immigration parties.

"I am leaning towards the socialist parties, Die Linke, maybe the Greens - the majority of their policies I think is more for the people, the people who are not 1 percent of the country."

'We've paid our dues'

Yanaşmayan says that voting habits of newly naturalized Germans tend to lean towards parties on the left, but over time that can change.

"What I hear often is this idea that 'We've paid our dues'," she says, noting that "a lot of the misinformation that we hear in the media about refugees using social benefits, not working" leads to naturalized citizens "differentiating themselves from that – 'That's not how we did it' – especially for those with post-soviet backgrounds." 

Despite the changing demographics in Germany, a study done by Yanaşmayan's DeZIM research center shows voting behaviors differ little between those with or without an immigration background.

The front-runner in the opinion polls ahead of the weekend's elections is the center-right Christian Democratic Union party, which wants to reverse the current government's fast-track naturalization policy and restrict people from holding dual citizenship.

But Papitchaya does not think that is the right direction to take.

"This country has everything," she says. "Germany will get back from the people they accept in and are able to contribute to society and help shape it."