The waiting time to apply for Australian citizenship has been significantly extended in the past few months, with government officials blaming the surge in applications and stricter security checks.
Extension of waiting period to 16 months after submission of application for naturalization
The average waiting time between filing an application and granting citizenship has been extended from 12 months in March 2016 to 16 months in the current fiscal year.
Luke Mansfield, an internal affairs official, said there were a number of factors contributing to the prolongation of time.
Mansfield told a Senate committee in Canberra on Tuesday: "one of the reasons is that the Home Office has increased its screening and inspection process from a national security and crime risk perspective.
"the second factor driving this change is the increase in the number of applications, which have increased year by year on a very large basis."
Mr. Mansfield said that the nature of the applications submitted to the sector had also changed.
"there has been an increase in the number of applications from some people who arrived a few years ago without any form of identification documents, and the process around establishing their identity is clearly going to take a long time to complete," he said.
As of April 30, the Home Affairs Department had received about two hundred and ten thousand naturalization applications on hand.
These include applications that have been submitted but have not yet been evaluated, applications still under review, and the number of persons who have not yet attended the swearing-in ceremony.
Mr. Mansfield said the division`s processing staff have increased by 16 percent since July 2016 to meet the increase in naturalization applications.
