At present, it is becoming more and more difficult to become an Australian citizen. The waiting period for naturalization is more than two years, and the number of immigrants subject to stricter background checks has soared by 450 percent.
The Australian Federal Ombudsman's Office, (Commonwealth Ombudsman), released the results of an 18-month survey in December 2017. The survey found that the number of people applying for naturalization through the "nationality grant" (citizenship by conferral), such as those who were refugees, surged by 450 percent in the number of immigrants who were subject to rigorous status checks and waited longer than two years for naturalization. Similar figures have increased since November 2016, when the government stepped up screening for naturalized applicants, from 338 in November 2016 to nearly 2000 in mid-2017.
According to the report, the granting of nationality is a channel for permanent residents. They must meet a series of conditions, pass the naturalization test and attend the naturalization ceremony. At the beginning of January 2018, the immigration authorities received a total of 167820 "nationality grant" applications, 5680 of which reached the age of two.
The agency's focus is on people who are subject to "intensive scrutiny" and "loyalty checks" because of background factors. These background factors include the applicant's country of origin, the applicant's "irregular" visit to Australia or changes in personal information. The report shows that the longest pending naturalization application has now been waiting for more than four years. The "service standard" set by the immigration department is that most cases will be dealt with within 80 days.
"in early 2016, the federal ombudsman's office received more complaints, saying they had waited more than a year for a naturalization application, and some for more than two years." "over the past year and a half, we have received about 300 complaints about delays in immigration," the Commissioner's December 2017 report said.
The Australian Federal Investigator's Office found that Afghanistan accounted for the largest number of immigrants from Afghanistan among those who took more than 80 days to process their naturalization applications. People from the war-torn country were singled out by immigration authorities as "special cases" because of so-called "loyalty issues", the commission said.
"while the department has improved in reducing the backlog of applications, there is still a need for improvement in assessing more complex cases," the report said.
