Christopher Drexler, the governor of the Austrian region of Styria, has demanded that procedures for migrants to obtain Austrian citizenship be toughened up and pointed out that the shortened deadline for a six-year stay in the country should be up for debate.
According to the Austrian local media, the governor believes that immigrants need a more intensive confrontation with what defines the West, referring to the Austrian society as the naturalisation rates in the country, especially in the last three years, have surged.
It’s not enough to take a vow to the constitution; it’s about making it credible that you are connected to our legal and value system. – Christopher Drexler, Governor of the Austrian region of Styria
The governor also believes that the required period of stay in Austria that makes migrants eligible for Austrian citizenship should be discussed, as it has been shortened from ten to six years, making it easier for migrants to obtain an Austrian passport.
According to him, with more migrants coming into the country, Austria has imported anti-Semitism, misogyny and homophobia.
If I’m confronted with the fact that a 14-year-old, who came to Graz in 2015 as a six-year-old, is propagating the destruction of the city of Graz in a Tiktok video – then I’ll face the question, what happened in these eight years? Which school did he go to? Which social workers took care of it?
Through this shortened procedure, which is being criticised by Drexler, a total of 475 people became Austrian citizens in 2021, with their stay period in Austria being four years shorter than before. This number rose even further in 2022 – to 95 people, while in the first half of 2023, it stood at 101 applicants becoming Austrian citizens.
Between 2021 and 2023, only around 280 people received citizenship after ten years of legal residence in Austria. The most common reason for rejection during this period is cited as the lack of secure livelihoods. Incidentally, there are still 553 untreated cases open for this year.
Austrian media reveals that the number of applications for naturalisation in Styria is rising, with application rates increasing by 19.5 per cent between 2021 and 2022. In general, the number of naturalisation applications rose from 1,221 to 1,460.
In the first half of 2023, a total of 1,085 applications for naturalisation were registered, indicating that over one-third of applications filed in the whole of 2022 have already been registered in the first half of the year alone.
Of the 3,766 applications in the last two and a half years, around 52.6 per cent of those (1,981) were approved by authorities in the Styria region, granting Austrian citizenship to these applicants.
The country of origin for applicants tends to change, but Bosnians remain the largest population group to seek Austrian citizenship for 2021, filing a total of 119 applications, followed by Syrians (80), Turks (76), Afghanis (68) and Kosovars (65).
While Bosnians filed the most applications in 2021, the highest approval rate was recorded for Syrian applicants – around 200- while other applicants, such as Bosnians, Afghanis, Turks and Itani, had fewer positive responses.
These rates are expected to change in 2023, as in the first half of the year, applicants from Turkiye have the highest application rates- a total of 48, followed by applicants from Syria (39), Afghanistan (25), Iran (18) and Iraq (15).
