SBS World News investigates why some long-term residents dont ever become Australians.
The longer a migrant spends in Australia, the more likely they are to become a citizen. Overall, approximately 80 per cent of migrants take up citizenship, according to government research.
However the take-up rate varies depending on the arrival's source country.
New Zealands special case
Fewer than one third of Kiwis living in Australia have taken up Australian citizenship.
Paul Hamer, a migration researcher at Victoria University in Wellington, said the rate for New Zealanders has traditionally been much lower than for people from other countries.
There has been little need for them to take that step, and no sense of needing to commit themselves to their new country, he said.
Monash Universitys Professor Andrew Markus said Kiwis faced special obstacles before becoming citizens which has caused citizenship take-up among recent arrivals to drop to nearly zero.
"Having de facto permanent residency - for many of them there is no path to citizenship."
Professor Markus said those that wanted citizenship needed to take extra steps such as an income test, otherwise they face poorer migration and welfare outcomes.
Not a citizen? Not fussed
The citizenship take-up rate for Japanese people is even lower than those from New Zealand.
It takes four decades of living in Australia for the citizenship take-up rate to reach 50 per cent.
Japan does not allow its citizens to become dual nationals, so a Japanese migrant would have to choose between an allegiance to Australia or to their homeland.
Migrants from countries such as Norway, Denmark, Austria, Indonesia and Malaysia are also less likely to obtain citizenship. Like Japan, these countries traditionally do not allow dual citizens, even though the global trend is away from such restrictions.
In the citizenship take-up ladder, England, Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the United States sit only narrowly above these countries.
Professor Markus said becoming Australian wasnt a priority for some within this group of arrivals.
The test
The government wants to change citizenship laws to make it more difficult for migrants to become Australians, but already millions of locals eligible for citizenship either cannot or do not take up the offer.
Under the government's proposed test, people will have to have lived in Australia longer and have better English proficiency than before in order to pass.
Community groups and experts have expressed concern about the new laws, but the government is adamant they are important for the communitys safety.
The Labor Party argues that the reform will create an underclass of non-citizens, made up of people who cant pass the updated test.
Some aspiring Australians find the current citizenship test difficult enough.
In 2014-15, the last year where statistics are available, 114,109 people sat the Australian citizenship test and 112,474 passed.
That leaves more than 1500 applicants whose citizenship aspirations were dashed that year.
For those that failed, there wasn't previously anything to stop them sitting the test again, but the government now wants to limit applicants to three attempts every two years.
Taking pride in citizenship
At the other end of the scale to Japanese and New Zealanders, citizenship take-up is high among arrivals from some other nations - despite language difficulties.
Of the group of migrants who arrived between 1976 and 1985 and still do not speak English, 6100 are Australian citizens, compared to fewer than 300 who are not citizens. At 94 per cent, the citizenship take-up rate for this group is more than three percentage points higher than the rate for those who arrived at this time who speak English very well.
Around two thirds of this migrant subgroup from the 1970s and 1980s are from China, Vietnam and Cambodia: all countries from which Australia accepted a large numbers of refugees during this time.
Research from the government in 2011 identified there was a large variation in the take-up rate of Australian citizenship by country of birth and immigration group, "with persons from countries with lower economic or civil opportunities, and refugees in particular, being more likely to take-up Australian citizenship.
Almost all migrants from the Balkan states of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo and the African country Eritrea who arrived in the late 1990s and early 2000s - countries which experienced war during this time - have taken up Australian citizenship.
Monashs Dr Markus said some groups have a real incentive to gain citizenship as soon as possible.
"They may really take pride in being Australian, more so than people from some of these other Anglo countries, he said.
"They appreciate Australian democracy."
