India Provides Maximum New Australian Citizens Annually

Thousands of people from India immigrate every year in a bid to fulfil their dreams. One of the more popular choices among Indian immigrants is Australia. The vast opportunities offered by the continent in educational and professional fields make it a good place to settle in. A recent study found that India is the topmost source when it comes to Australian citizenship in the last five years. India has managed to overtake the United Kingdom which held the position before.

The Number talk:

Almost 118,000 Indian-born migrants have legally adopted Australian citizenship since the year, 2013-14. These people have pledged their allegiance to the continent. Moreover, the number of Australia visa recipients is also the highest in India as can be deduced from the data collected by their annual permanent immigration program.
Alan Tudge, the Former Citizenship minister, disclosed statistics related to citizenship statistics in the Federal Parliament some time ago this year. As of 28th February 2018, 10,168 applications of the total 54,419 approved citizenship applications were from Indian-born migrants. That makes them the biggest group of people with approved visas. The United Kingdom follows India with 9,195 approved visas. South Africa comes third on the list with
2,617 applications while the Philippines accounted for 2,399.
Down the list, we have Sri Lanka (1962), the Republic of Ireland (1,731), People’s Republic of China (1559) and South Korea (1,200).
The year 2016-17 alone saw more than 22,000 Indians accepting Australian citizenship while 19,617 people from the UK pledged their allegiance to Australia in the same period. Indian-born migrants had occupied the top position since 2013-14 when 26,040 people were offered Australian citizenship. The United Kingdom has always been a close second.

The Problems:

However, the number of Australian Citizenship conferrals had dipped to an all-time low recently. In 2017-18, less than 81,000 migrants were granted Australian citizenship, and that is the lowest the number had dropped since 2002-03. There is also a problem with the rising backlog of citizenship applications yet to be approved.
The Department of Home Affairs reports that almost 245,000 applications had still not been processed at the end of June which is worrying for applicants because the processing time is between 17 and 19 months for citizenship by conferral all over the world. The overload can be attributed to Australia’s emphasis on “integrity and community safety” as they are trying to go for quality rather than quantity.
Some visa applications are requiring more thorough and complex analysis than usual which is taking up more time. However, the Department has reassured that it is trying to introduce measures which will allow for more efficient handling of visa applications. They hope to increase the number of conferrals this financial year.
A fifty-person taskforce has been assigned with the work of going through complex citizenship applications. Apart from that, more than a hundred additional workers have been given the duty of ensuring smooth processing of applications. The measures are proving to be fruitful already, and Australia hopes to welcome more deserving people into the continent as soon as possible.