Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia, Decision of 11.12.2020, Case No.: 19 E 146/20
To submit an application—whether for naturalization or legal aid—it must first be established who the applicant is. This process is known as identity verification. But what criteria are used to determine a person’s identity?
These criteria include, among other things, name, first name, and—as confirmed once again in the present case—date of birth. In this case, the plaintiff provided different dates of birth during his naturalization process, making it impossible to verify his identity. For this reason, the Administrative Court also denied his application for legal aid, and the Higher Administrative Court confirmed this decision for the same reason.
Facts of the Case:
The plaintiff had applied for legal aid for a naturalization procedure.
The plaintiff sought legal aid for his naturalization procedure. For this, he presented a Nigerian passport dated August 6, 2011, with a birth date of March 10, 1976. Additionally, he also provided another passport from May 13, 2005, and a birth certificate dated April 28, 2005, both documenting March 28, 1971, as his birth date.
Plaintiff Provided False Name and Birth Date, Court Denied Legal Aid
During the proceedings, it also emerged that the plaintiff had indicated in his asylum application with the BAMF (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) that his name was K. N., that he was from Liberia, and that he was born on March 10, 1980. On June 14, 2005, he informed the immigration office that his real name was D.K.N.P.V. and that his birth date was March 28, 1971. In the lawsuit, he finally stated that he was born on March 10, 1976. The Administrative Court dismissed his application for legal aid because his identity could not be verified. The plaintiff then filed a legal aid complaint with the Higher Administrative Court.
Decision of the Higher Administrative Court NRW:
The Higher Administrative Court Considered the Legal Aid Decision Lawful
The plaintiff’s legal aid complaint was admissible but unfounded. The Administrative Court had rightly denied the plaintiff’s application for legal aid for the first-instance legal proceedings on the grounds that his lawsuit had no reasonable prospect of success (§ 166(1) sentence 1 VwGO in conjunction with § 114(1) sentence 1 ZPO).
The plaintiff’s identity could not be determined, not simply because he had „once previously given a different date of birth,“ as he claimed. Instead, the Administrative Court, in line with the case law of the Federal Administrative Court and the Senate’s cited case law, pointed out that serious and clarifiable doubts about the identity of the naturalization applicant exist as long as suitable identity documents from his country of origin are missing, or if he presents forged, internally contradictory, or evidentially worthless documents (cf. Federal Administrative Court, Judgment of September 1, 2011 – 5 C 27.10 -, BVerwGE 140, 311, juris, para. 22; OVG NRW, Judgment of September 15, 2016 – 19 A 286/13 -, juris, paras. 30 f. with further references; Decision of September 13, 2018 – 19 E 728/17 -, juris, paras. 5 ff.; Lower Saxony Higher Administrative Court, Judgment of May 3, 2018 – 13 LB 107/16 -, juris, para. 43).
Identity of the Plaintiff Remained Unverified Due to Contradictory Information
The plaintiff provided documents with conflicting information regarding his personal details—specifically, his date of birth—and made contradictory statements. In addition, identical certificates from the same offices were presented, except for the date of birth, and some of the documents in the file did not match the life story he provided with his naturalization application. Therefore, there were significant doubts about the plaintiff’s identity.
The plaintiff had relied on a decision by the Higher Regional Court I, ruling from December 19, 2019 – 15 W 474/19, in his complaint. However, unlike in that case, the evidential value of the Nigerian passport from August 6, 2011, was undermined here by the fact that the second Nigerian passport presented by him from May 13, 2005, and the birth certificate from April 28, 2005, documented different birth dates. The Administrative Court rightly found that there was no reason to believe that one of these identity documents should be more credible than the others. The plaintiff had also provided different information regarding his name and birth date to the BAMF, the immigration office, and during the lawsuit.
The plaintiff could not explain why his previous birth dates differed from his last stated date, March 10, 1976, merely claiming that the earlier passport was mistakenly issued with a wrong date of birth.
The fact that the plaintiff was registered in the Central Register of Foreign Nationals with the data he provided, and that the civil registry office considered his identity to be established when issuing the birth certificates for his children, and the immigration office did not question his identity, did not mean that his identity was actually established. This is because identity determinations by immigration authorities do not have binding effect for subsequent naturalization procedures, as clarified by the case law of the Federal Administrative Court and already noted by the Administrative Court (cf. Federal Administrative Court, ibid., juris, paras. 14, 20; OVG NRW, Judgment of December 10, 2015 – 19 A 2132/12 -, StAZ 2017, 20, juris, para. 40).
The same applies to entries in the Central Register of Foreign Nationals, as these are made at the request of the immigration authorities. The Administrative Court also correctly pointed out that the plaintiff’s children’s birth certificates did not contain any information about his date of birth and therefore could not be used to establish his identity. The reference to the parents‘ birth certificates under § 21(3) No. 3 of the Civil Status Act of February 19, 2007 (BGBl. I p. 122), last amended by Art. 88 of the Ordinance of June 19, 2020 (BGBl. I p. 1328) – PStG – does not participate in the evidential value of civil status register entries under § 54(1) sentence 2 PStG. Therefore, it is irrelevant whether and why the registry office had no doubts about the plaintiff’s identity when registering him as the father of the children.
Identity Includes Name, First Name, and Date of Birth
For the clarification of identity and nationality within the meaning of § 10(1) sentence 1 StAG, the required identity characteristics also include the date of birth. When issuing the naturalization certificate under § 16 sentence 1 StAG, a new nationality is granted to a specific person whose identity is recorded in the certificate. Thus, identity characteristics such as name, first name, and date of birth are declaratively recorded, while nationality is constitutively changed. Verification of the identity information is necessary due to the public interest in ensuring that the naturalization certificate is also correct concerning the recorded personal data. Naturalization does not aim to grant a person a completely new identity or an additional alias identity. Therefore, verifying the personal data under which the naturalization applicant is registered abroad is imperative. There is a significant state interest in preventing a single person from appearing in legal transactions with multiple different identities and official identification documents (Federal Administrative Court, ibid., para. 13; see also OVG NRW, Judgment of September 15, 2016, ibid., para. 35; Lower Saxony Higher Administrative Court, Decision of July 1, 2020 – 13 LA 55/20 -, AuAS 2020, 188, juris, para. 9, and the legislative rationale for the Third Act to Amend the Nationality Act of August 4, 2019 (BGBl. I p. 1124), BT-Drs. 19/11083, pp. 11 f.).
Source: Higher Administrative Court Münster
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