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Moderators: Casa, Amber, archigabe, batleykhan, ca.funke, ChetanOjha, EUsmileWEallsmile, JAJ, John, Obie, push, geriatrix, vinny, CR001, zimba, meself2
This reply is second-hand information so please do not take it literally. But one of my friends became Italian National, he says the usual waiting time in Italy to become national after the application is submitted, is two to three years. In light of that he was genuinely surprised when I told my wife got approved within two months, and many here get approval within eight months. His reaction was nothing short of "lucky you" but that could be just a handful of cases he observed there in Italy.MrBrilliant wrote: Very rarely in the world does it take an otherwise advanced nation months/years to process a few pages of paperwork.
Actually we don't know what security checks they do. For example if they check your records in home country it could take a lot of time depending on your country.MrBrilliant wrote:Still doesn't make any sense. The application fee of over £900 a head should more than cover man-hours. If they run out of staff, they should be able to hire more staff. 125,000 applicants is well over £100 million, with that kind of money they should be able to hire a few staffers to help out for that.
It's similar in US, a friend of mine recently took up US citizenship and in all it took him about year and half. He said because he was from Australia his wait for Green Card wasn't too long but people from some countries have to wait years before they get one.Casa wrote:Having live in Spain I can confirm that it takes around two years for a Spanish citizenship application to be processed and in most cases 10 years of residency before qualifying.
Yes, it definitely varies from country to country & I'm sure based on your original country of citizenship & individual immigration history. I too know of a family friend who once explained the complexities around acquiring US citizenship. He said his application was still in progress after 2 years, with stacks of paperwork involved in the process. I know how much paperwork I had to submit for both a long term work visa, and also the immigration history they go into when applying for a simple business visit visa.caffeine wrote:It's similar in US, a friend of mine recently took up US citizenship and in all it took him about year and half. He said because he was from Australia his wait for Green Card wasn't too long but people from some countries have to wait years before they get one.Casa wrote:Having live in Spain I can confirm that it takes around two years for a Spanish citizenship application to be processed and in most cases 10 years of residency before qualifying.
I think people get worried unnecessarily, if you have followed all the rules there is no reason why you wouldn't get a citizenship. Its just a matter of time..
If that were the case, I think many countries would simply not bother to respond, so the reality would be that these cases would remain in limbo indefinitely, instead of waiting 6 months.ukswus wrote:My understanding is that they sometimes have to contact a number of governmental departments, both in the UK and overseas. Those departments have their own agendas, and may not be in a hurry to respond to the home office. So, comparison with "background checks" agencies is not very fair, in my opinion.
Again, my understanding is that they do these detailed checks on certain applications fitting a risk profile. If they did this on every single one, the application consideration process would take years, not months.waiz89k wrote:If UKVI is doing background checks on every applications then how come one application is taking couple of weeks to go through the whole procedure including all checks and approval as well and other takes 6 months or more. that doesn't make any sense at all.
It is just HO is not bothered and just making money and applications r gathering dusts and waiting to be allocated to the caseworkers. There is an applicant on this forum who's MP got a reply from HO that applicant's check have got expired and we have to do it again in order to complete his application. So if application is allocated to the caseworker and checks r expired then caseworker will order them again and application join the que once again.
In my opinion UKVI has all the checks on their finger tips i.e PNC, Immigration history and may be some checks takes time like HMRC, Councils and other security agencies but I dont think so these checks can take ages. These all checks can be done in matter of days or probably weeks. HO doesn't do back home checks unless it has got to do with war crimes or something extremely serious.
In the cases you describe, there are organizations that *want* you to get that brand new car or job. In the case of citizenship, nobody but you really needs it. Government organizations all over the world tend to be inefficient and understaffed. In the US, any issue with your drivers license may involve waiting for hours in a queue. Nobody cares but you.MrBrilliant wrote:Where did I say I'm worried or frustrated?
Your anecdotal experiences illustrate exactly what I'm talking about: Citizenship applications take a long time, both in the UK and elsewhere. My question is, why? It doesn't make sense.
For reference, you can buy a brand new car on finance, and all they do is a credit check which takes seconds. You can get a job in a highly regulated environment (e.g. investment banking) and they will perform a full background check, calling up every single past employer and every school you attended, and this takes about a week. You can get a job teaching kids, and they will again do a full background check and criminal check, which again takes something on the order of days/weeks.
So why does a citizenship application take so long? I'm not complaining, so saying "citizenship is a privilege not a right" is completely off topic and irrelevant. I just wondered if anybody knows why it takes so long.
I don't imagine that one person is sitting there working on your case for 9 months. So obviously they're sitting on it. But is this a bureaucratic inefficiency, or are they actually waiting for something during this time? Are they watching you to see if you behave?
Saying that they have a large number of applicants is also wrong. Like you said yourself, every nation has the same problem: They make you wait months/years to process the application. It's consistently slow everywhere, not just in the UK, so it's not because "they moved everybody to work on UK passport applications".
Furthermore, having a backlog is a temporary problem. Citizenship has taken months/years to process for as long as anyone can remember, so the reason is not "they got more applications than usual this year".
I am not saying they do this checks on every single applicant. They have to fit a certain risk profile. I also do not see much point in speculating abou "what if" scenarios, as I simply do not have any information about how intergovernmental communication works in such cases.MrBrilliant wrote:If that were the case, I think many countries would simply not bother to respond, so the reality would be that these cases would remain in limbo indefinitely, instead of waiting 6 months.ukswus wrote:My understanding is that they sometimes have to contact a number of governmental departments, both in the UK and overseas. Those departments have their own agendas, and may not be in a hurry to respond to the home office. So, comparison with "background checks" agencies is not very fair, in my opinion.
Thanks Casa, that means Italy case mentioned by my friend, might be closer to reality.Casa wrote:Having live in Spain I can confirm that it takes around two years for a Spanish citizenship application to be processed and in most cases 10 years of residency before qualifying.
I understand the vent, but like it or not, citizenship is a privilege not a right ( page 8 ) so you need to fulfil the requirements of said Govt. whether or not they "make sense" to you, is of no concern of the Govt.MrBrilliant wrote: Your anecdotal experiences illustrate exactly what I'm talking about: Citizenship applications take a long time, both in the UK and elsewhere. My question is, why? It doesn't make sense.
Actually you don't understand at all. Maybe read my post again in full, or ask someone to help you read it if you have trouble. As I mentioned, "citizenship is a privilege not a right" is completely off-topic.fwd079 wrote:I understand the vent, but like it or not, citizenship is a privilege not a right ( page 8 ) so you need to fulfil the requirements of said Govt. whether or not they "make sense" to you, is of no concern of the Govt.MrBrilliant wrote: Your anecdotal experiences illustrate exactly what I'm talking about: Citizenship applications take a long time, both in the UK and elsewhere. My question is, why? It doesn't make sense.
Dear OP,MrBrilliant wrote:Actually you don't understand at all. Maybe read my post again in full, or ask someone to help you read it if you have trouble. As I mentioned, "citizenship is a privilege not a right" is completely off-topic.fwd079 wrote:I understand the vent, but like it or not, citizenship is a privilege not a right ( page 8 ) so you need to fulfil the requirements of said Govt. whether or not they "make sense" to you, is of no concern of the Govt.MrBrilliant wrote: Your anecdotal experiences illustrate exactly what I'm talking about: Citizenship applications take a long time, both in the UK and elsewhere. My question is, why? It doesn't make sense.
Interesting reply.MrBrilliant wrote:
Actually you don't understand at all. Maybe read my post again in full, or ask someone to help you read it if you have trouble. As I mentioned, "citizenship is a privilege not a right" is completely off-topic.