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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.

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  • Did you get your citizenship approved??
    – Kamal
    Jan 15, 2022 at 20:48

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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:

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  • Hi, Mark, just a small note: your example of "If you had a student residence permit for 4 years and afterwords a restricted residence permit for a further 4 years" is quite unrealistic, since one is expected to get a permanent residence permit earlier. E.g., 4 years as a student count as 2 for permanent residency; after 3 more years with restricted residence after study is finished, one can already apply for permanent residency. Jul 3, 2020 at 7:44
  • @AndreySapegin Where did you get that information? Jul 3, 2020 at 8:14
  • AufenthG §9, (4) Punkt 3 (siehe gesetze-im-internet.de/aufenthg_2004/__9.html) Jul 3, 2020 at 8:27
  • @AndreySapegin Yes, that is clear. Will adapt the answer. The text of the pdf stated otherwise: that the complete time of legal residence will be counted. Jul 3, 2020 at 8:46
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    @AndreySapegin The answer has been adapted that better reflects the situation than your suggested changes. Jul 3, 2020 at 9:16

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