Verlenging naturalisatietermijnen

Reactie

Vraag1

Dear Decision Makers,

I write to express my strong opposition to the proposed increase of the minimum continuous legal residence for naturalisation from 5 years to 10 years, as announced by the cabinet on 26 September 2025. The proposal is unfair in principle and harmful in practice for the following reasons:

1. It breaches reasonable expectations of residents who moved here under the existing 5-year pathway and creates prolonged legal and social insecurity for long-term contributors.
2. Time served is a blunt measure of integration. The Netherlands already has integration instruments (including the Civil Integration Act) that more directly assess language and civic knowledge. Policies should prioritize meaningful, measurable integration rather than raw residency length.
3. The Netherlands needs to retain international talent. Recent data show a decline in highly-skilled migration; making citizenship materially harder risks further weakening the labor market and investment climate.
4. A repeat of earlier proposals to lengthen residence requirements — which faced Parliamentary scrutiny and rejection in the past — should be approached with far greater evidentiary support and impact assessment than has been presented so far.

For these reasons I urge you to withdraw the proposal or, at least, subject it to a full independent impact assessment, make it explicitly non-retroactive, and introduce targeted alternatives that measure integration rather than merely extending time.