Maria Zadnepryanets loved Germany when she first arrived. The Russian software developer came to North Rhine-Westphalia a decade ago to study and was amazed by what she found — the freedoms, the public services, the educational opportunities. Now, thanks to a four-year battle with Berlin bureaucracy, she feels like "a second-class citizen."

"I came to Germany with a very naive idea of what it's like to live here," she told DW. "I thought that it's a fair place. My expectation was that people are treated equally by the state, and this experience has given me a different message."

In her first years in the country, she went out of her way to integrate: She learned German as quickly as she could, found a well-paying job in a modern sector where Germany needs workers and settled in the capital. In 2020, she submitted all her documents for naturalization in the Pankow district of Berlin — and then heard nothing, for months and then years.

After her emails were ignored, she consulted a lawyer, who suggested taking the Pankow office to court. But she decided against that, and in the fall of 2022 resorted to sending faxes to any official fax numbers she found — "to escalate my case," as she put it. In response, the office asked for more documents, which she sent — again, there was no response.

"How I understood things with this whole citizenship story was: I do my part, I work, I contribute, I learn the language, I integrate, and then after a certain period of time I will be given citizenship," she said. "It felt like I had done all these things, but that part of the deal was just not happening."

Zadnepryanets isn't the only one — in social media groups, skilled workers and migrants who contribute to society are venting their anger about their experiences with German bureaucracy. In late June, some mounted a protest calling for "a fair and transparent processing of citizenship applications."

Many have begun to feel that only legal action........

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