Hundreds of thousands of migrants are waiting over sixteen months to become Australian citizens despite a massive decline in the number of citizenship applications last year.
Of the 221,000 people with pending applications for Australian citizenship, Indian migrants lead the pack with nearly 30,000 applications, followed by those from the United Kingdom (27,000) and China (17,000). Prospective citizens now face an average waiting time of 493 days to make their pledge of allegiance to Australia, up from 167 days in 2012-13.
