381 lawmakers, mostly from the left-liberal coalition government voted in favor of a draft law that will allow immigrants to procure German citizenship after five years of residence in the country instead of eight.
Furthermore, immigrants who show outstanding academic or professional achievements, as well as good language skills will be able to obtain citizenship as early as three years.
Voting against the new law were 234 conservative and far-right lawmakers while 23 chose to abstain.
Aside from reducing the time to acquire citizenship, the new law will also allow immigrants to hold dual citizenship or multiple nationalities, which was not allowed before for many of those coming from outside of the European Union.
Currently, around 14% of 12 million of the total population of Germany does not possess German citizenship and according to figures, 5.3 million have been living in the country for at least 10 years.
