Australian Citizenship Permits Increased by 88%

  Compared to last year's 70,000 citizenship permits, more than 132,000 citizenship applications were approved this year, the Minister of Immigration said.   Wait times for Australian citizenship have decreased, queues have decreased and citizenship approvals have increased significantly over the last year, according to the latest figures released by the Interior Ministry.   Melbourne-based Harshdeep Singh Gill, a nurse by profession, filed his application for citizenship by application in September 2018. On Monday, he attended the Australian citizenship ceremony.   Mr. Gill, who was granted citizenship in less than 10 months, said he was able to postpone the date of his citizenship test, which speeded up the application process.   "The date of my initial test was in September 2019, but I continued to check online and was able to postpone my test date to May 2019. I passed the 100% test," he said. he told SBS Hindi.   "I encourage people to check the online portal and check the date of the rescheduling test, which could result in an earlier test date."   Approvals have increased by 88 per cent in a year   "Between July 1, 2018 and May 31, 2019, more than 132,000 applications for citizenship per grant were approved, compared with 70,000 in the same period of the previous year. That's an 88% increase, said David Coleman, Minister of Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs.   Minister Coleman attributed these results to a series of reforms implemented by the Ministry of the Interior.   These measures include the creation of special teams within the Department of the Interior responsible for complex cases of citizenship, the improvement of systems to automate processes and a $ 9 million investment in the recruitment and training of additional staff to process requests as efficiently as possible.   "Thanks to these measures, the number of citizenship applications submitted in grant applications has dropped to approximately 222,800, up from nearly 250,000 last year, and this number is expected to continue to decline," said Coleman.