Dual citizenship American/German

As of yesterday I am a German citizen – yet still have my American citizenship. This was a surprise since the general rule is that unless one has a birth-ship right to  German citizenship then getting it means giving up your former citizenship – unless from other EU countries, Switzerland and just a handful of exceptions. Brazil and Argentina are 2 of the exceptions; the reason being that they don’t allow their citizens to renounce citizenship. All of the information I had found, and I researched it extensively, claimed one HAS to give up their US citizenship to obtain the German one. But the US has raised the fee for doing so to 2500 USD, which is totally out of line with the rest of the world. What I didn’t know is that the German government responded by passing a regulation that if the fee is higher than one’s monthly income, then it is too great a burden and they allow dual citizenship to take place.  Thus it is not automatic but determined on your income.  This is also tricky because they also don’t want people who make too little money to live and are at risk of needing social assistance.

Otherwise, the whole process took me 13 month. They asked for documentation about  income and if one is filing and paying taxes and social contributions, they looks at one’s accommodation and living costs and make sure they haven’t committed crimes or joined extremist groups. One has to take the citizenship test which I found simple. Most questions are obvious for one who has lived a long time in Germany and the possible questions with answers are listed online. The B1 German test was also simple for me. It truly favors people who have experience getting along in German although their grammar might not be perfect. People who seemed to have trouble with the test were often ones that had completed many language courses but not lived more than a couple of years in Germany. I myself took just a couple of courses years ago but self-studied and pushed myself to watch TV and read local newspapers, magazines and books as soon as I was able.

The uptake from my experience is that no, one does not need to spend a lot of money on lawyers to navigatge such a process. But one needs to effectively ask for information from officials as to details and exceptions that might make a huge diffence in one's personal situation.