Do my years as a student in Germany count for applying for a citizenship?

Question

As a non-EU citizen I moved to Bayern and I finished both my bachelor's and master's degree on a german university. While I was in Bayern I lived with a residence permit for non-EU citizens for 5 years. Currently I am working in another Bundesland again with a residence permit, still in Germany. My question is, do the 5 years count towards my needed 8 year stay for citizenship, because I read somewhere that Bayern does not count the years as a student, but I read that only on one page, I didn't find anything about that on their official site.

Answer 1

The Nationality Act is a federal law and thus applies to all states.

One of the main conditions is that you have an unrestricted residence permit which is generally issued after 5 years

• the full time as a student does not count to recieve this
  • since the student residence permit is not issued with the intention of a long term residence
  • only 50% of this time will be taken (§9 (4)(3) AufenthG)

Persons who do not have a unrestricted residence permit can still be eligible if the present permit has been issued with the intention of a long term residence.

There are different conditions where the default 8 years can be reduced to 7 or 6 years. The responsible authority have a certain amount of leeway to determine if the degree of integration expected after 8 years has already been achieved after 6 years.

If you had a student residence permit for 4 years and afterwords a long term residence permit for a further 2 years

• the 6 years would count fully
  • Page 21 of PDF: Bei besonderen Integrationsleistungen kann die Frist auf sechs Jahre verkürzt werden.

If, after 8 years, you still are studying with a student residence permit

• the 8 years don't count

---

Sources:

• Nationality Act
• Wege zur Einbürgerung Wie werde ich Deutsche - wie werde ich Deutscher - Bund.de (PDF)