Aihal

  According to an immigration lawyer I consulted, the definition is intentionally vague and not well defined; and there is no such thing as a `presence test`; and its forbidden for the Amt doing the applications asking the BorderAmt for your travel dates etc.   I had difficulty believing this, wanted to ask if anyone has a contrarian information.

Hi All, So I am technically eligible for German Citizenship. Been Permanent resident (Niederlassungserlaubnis) for 9+ years. Own a property and live in Munich (mostly). -but- during this COVID times, we got a taste for being digital nomad.   While we never left Germany longer than 179 days in any outing; I am about to exceed the 180+ day barrier in aggregate. I mean every few months I fly in, hang around few days, collect mails, hang out with customers etc and fly out again.   So purely for the purposes of German Citizenship application; Do they perform a `physical presence` test: - Do they ask times and durations of each travel (USA does this in their Citizenship application) - Do they ask German Border Police of your border passing records? Or do they even care so long you are a tax paying, property owning, with a proper anmeldung?   As far I understood the key concept is "Lawful habitual residence" defined in here:  https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/downloads/DE/veroeffentlichungen/themen/verfassung/stag-anwendungshinweise-06-15.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=5   as far as I can tell nothing specifically says anything about Physical Presence; and as far as I can tell, FinanzAmt will never try to prevent me from paying taxes, and keep my tax resident status.     Best regards, AI HAL9000

Hi All, I believe @LeonG nailed the problem on is head. But with my broken German what I understood is that they have to choose between their US and German citizenship (at 18 I've been told)...  Maybe best would be to contact an immigration lawyer if the new Coalition doesn't relax dual citizenship laws.