After achieving independence, on 25 June 1991, the so-called legislation of independence of the Republic of Slovenia (i.e. laws needed in the field of citizenship, aliens, external borders and passports in order to carry out the independence in practice) were published in the Official Gazette of Republic of Slovenia, including Aliens Act and Passports of the Citizens of the Republic of Slovenia Act. The Ministry of the Interior began to inform Local Administrative Offices on the new legislation.

For this purpose the Ministry of the Interior sent the first internal instruction to the Local Administrative Offices by which officials were warned about the changed legal status of the citizens of other republics of former Yugoslavia living in Slovenia.

Two groups of citizens of other Republics were defined as well as the methods according to which these groups should be dealt with.

1. Citizens of other republics who registered their permanent residence in Slovenia after 23 December 1990 or have a temporary residence or want to register permanent or temporary residence should be considered as foreignersin all administrative procedures in the field of internal affairs concerning their rights.This is the group of people who according to the conditions of the Citizenship Act didn’t have the right to acquire citizenship by extraordinary naturalization, because they registered their permanent residence too late (after the plebiscite) or because they only had temporary residence in Slovenia. This group of people was not allowed to vote in the plebiscite for independence.
2. Citizens of other Republics who had a permanent residence registered in Slovenia on 23 December 1990 and they still have it, are in their rights and obligations equal to citizens of RS.This group had the right to vote in the plebiscite and also had possibility to acquire citizenship by extraordinary naturalization if they also fulfilled two other conditions (the first one was de facto life in Slovenia and the second one, which was added later, required that the person did not represent a threat to public order, safety and defence of the country). For individuals from this group a six-month period for lodging a citizenship application started on 25 June 1991 and until the expiration of this time limit they were in their rights equal to citizens of Slovenia.