Unprecedented demand and waiting time for Australian citizenship

Demand to be an Australian citizen has never been higher and the Federal Government says that is why applications are now taking almost a year and a half to be processed.

The Australian Government Department of Immigration and Citizenship in Sydney. Source: AAP

Latest figures from the Home Affairs Department show 9 in 10 Australian citizenship applications will now take 17 months to be processed.

With the lengthy waiting times also comes a ballooning number of people in the queue. Close to 189,000 people are waiting for their citizenship applications to be processed.

That is more than eight times the number in 2015, when there were just under 23,000.

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