Australian Citizenship Applicants Must File Applications Before Spring

28 Aug 2018

 Details

Permanent residents must file applications for Australian citizenship before spring. Presently, there are figures suggesting that the processing queue in the Department of Immigration has exceeded by more than 300 per cent. ?

New data of the Department of Home Affairs demonstrates that the number of PRs who are waiting for the approval of citizenship applications has increased severely. Presently it is 189,000 under the Coalition leadership.

Many of these applicants (140,000) were added after PM Turnbull, assumed office. In the past, the numbers of migrants who apply annually for becoming citizens were in the range of 190,000-200,000. The figure remained static in comparison to the 130,000 applications approved each year after 2013.

Additional facts

Furthermore, the Permanent Residents of Australia can live and also work in the country. Moreover, there are restrictions on accessing the rights and social services which are available to citizens. These are:

• Social security payments;
• HECS-HELP student loans;
• Priority in accessing sponsor family member visa;
• The right to Voting;
• The right to submit application for work in public sector needing security clearance.

The processing delays were made worse by the failed attempt of the government in introducing hard restrictions on citizenship applications.

Citizenship is central to Australian identity

The government states that citizenship is central to an Australian identity. Furthermore it must happen after considering the national interest. It pursues this objective by introducing these reforms to the Citizenship Program:

• A tough and separate English test, covering speaking, reading, listening and writing;
• The norm of applicants to live in Australia as permanent residents for four years instead of the present one year minimum;
• Strengthening the test which will have questions to assess understanding of and commitment of an applicant towards shared values and the citizenship responsibilities of Australia;
• applicants must also demonstrate the ways they will attempt to integrate in the country and contribute to the community;
• Limit on the number of times when the applicants can fail in the citizenship test to three;
• Introducing failing feature for applicants who cheat in the Citizenship Test.

Some developments

These changes were defeated in the Senate in October 2017; but the government aims to reintroduce them in 2018.

Moreover there are more attempts by the Coalition to get support for this legislation after a new set of changes. These include a trimmed conversational English test, to be used to streamline the processing stage.

Data reveals that 75 percent of citizenship applicants have to wait for more than 13 months for a Department of Home Affairs decision. The Average processing time is more than three months below in comparison to October 2017.

The Minister for Citizenship, Alan Tudge, defended the increase in processing times of the department, and said that many factors contributed to the application backlog.

• Firstly, the demand for citizenship is high,
• Presently, there are much greater national security threats,
• The processing of the 50,000 people arriving unlawfully by boat in the past

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