By Oula Mahfouz
“I have great respect for you, looking at your resume so far”: that’s what Tübingen’s District Administrator Joachim Walter said to Batool Hadous. The district administrator recently presented the 21-year-old native Syrian with her naturalization certificate at a celebration of the district’s 50th anniversary. The Rottenburg native stood on stage as a representative of all newly naturalized citizens from 94 nations who had acquired German citizenship in the past three years in the district of Tübingen. In the two previous years, the ceremony was cancelled due to Corona.
Walter paid tribute to Hadous, who had kept her cheerfulness and friendliness despite difficult life circumstances. She had fled with her aunt and uncle and arrived in Germany in 2015. During the flight, Hadous was very worried about her family, who were still in Syria.
Some eight years after fleeing, the eleventh-grader at Tübingen’s Kepler Gymnasium can claim many successes. Among other things, she is a scholarship holder of the “Talent im Land” (TiL) program. TiL supports particularly talented and committed students who have had to overcome many hurdles due to their social background or immigration history. Hadous is also a member of the team at tünews INTERNATIONAL, an online news portal by refugees not just for refugees. The newly naturalized refugee wants to use her rights and opportunities to achieve her goals—for example, to study.
Batool Hadous answered the question what citizenship means to her: “That I could find a second home here.” The 21-year-old would “like to be a part of this community and contribute to its development.”
In total, 405 people were naturalized in Tübingen County in 2020, 518 people in 2021 and 609 women and men in 2022.
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Batool Hadous hat in Tübingen eine zweite Heimat gefunden. Foto: tünews INTERNATIONAL / Oula Mahfouz.
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