Cem Özdemir (left), then domestic policy spokesman for the Bundestag faction from Alliance 90/The Greens, and Rupert von Plottnitz (right), then Hessian Justice Minister and one of the Greens’ top candidates in the 1999 Hessian Landtag elections, introduce a poster with the slogan “Born here, at home here.” With this message, the Greens were demanding a reform of the citizenship law – specifically, they wanted to see a new law based on the principle of jus soli (citizenship through place of birth) instead of the principle of jus sanguinis (citizenship through descent), which was valid at the time. The proposed reform would make it possible for children born in Germany to foreign parents to obtain dual citizenship. Özdemir, the son of Turkish immigrants, had been elected to the Bundestag in 1994. With his election, he became the first Bundestag deputy of Turkish origin.