You seem to be talking about a lot of different things that are not a coherent part of this discussion. But taking one point:

> line to actual citizenship that could be more than multiple lifetimes long

I'm not sure what you are referring to: almost every immigrant I know in the U.S. who wanted to pursue citizenship got it after at most 7 years in the country, sometimes less. That's a normal time range for most Western countries.

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/guides/ch...