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Citizenship laws are arbitrary. I live in Australia, with a non-married partner, and we have very similar backgrounds, both being born in the same country (not Australia). But she is an Australian citizen, since it turns out that her mother was Australian and emigrated. I could now also become an Australian citizen, by obtaining a partnership visa, but it's a slow and expensive process involving a lot of intrusive paperwork. I'll just live here as a temporary visa holder instead, which I can do indefinitely. I don't lose much besides the right to vote.

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> I'll just live here as a temporary visa holder instead

Be glad that your temporary visa doesn't expire. That's... not common in other countries.

Yeah, it's special for historical reasons, the 444 visa. It's temporary in the sense that it would expire if I left Australia, but I could get another one if I came back. The other downside for any non-citizen is getting deported (or being denied reentry) if the government thinks you are undesirable for any reason.

Edit: and I just want to make clear that I'm not criticising the Australian government in any way with these comments. Please don't deport me.

To be honest, you're realistically taking a lot of risk. The second the Australian government decided to change/rework how the visa works, you could be in a bit of trouble. I would personally move towards getting something more stable. Multiple citizenships are usually quite nice to have anyway.

Hopefully if the Australian government changes the system, they'll grandfather it for existing residents. They've done that in the past, and New Zealanders who arrived before around 2002 are treated as permanent residents.

I do have an EU citizenship as well, and in fact I'd lose that if I became an Australian citizen.

I have a "Permanent Resident" visa in Australia which expires every five years. Kind of funny that they have a "Temporary Resident" visa which is permanent! :D

(the Permanent Resident visa can be renewed online in about fifteen minutes when it expires, they just want you to attest that you still live here)

> I have a "Permanent Resident" visa in Australia which expires every five years. Kind of funny that they have a "Temporary Resident" visa which is permanent! :D

Technically you don't have to renew your permanent residency unless you leave Australia (but then you have to renew your temporary visa, too). Also you can apply to be a citizen after ~4 years of permanent residency while you can't apply if you only have a temporary visa.

>"I don't lose much besides the right to vote."

The guy picked newspaper from the outside stand in front of store and walked away thinking it was usual free stuff. Well it was not. Few minutes later he was arrested, ended up being convicted and eventually deported as he was not citizen.

I thought getting an Australian partner visa for my German girlfriend was an expensive and arduous process - a few solid weeks putting together a big binder of all our information, but for 'only' 10,000$AUD and a 3 month wait, she's now a Permanent Resident.

As I understand, it would not be possible in to do the reverse in Germany or most other European countries without waiting many years and getting married.

That was surprisingly fast, I thought there was some kind of waiting list that was years long. The $10,000 AUD absolutely stops me applying.

The processing time appears to vary roughly linearly with your whiteness, youth and skills. My friend with an Asian wife and two kids has been waiting two years.

In europe, excluding scam countries like malta, you don't have to pay such high fees to get processing.

In Japan it's 8000 yen (about USD$60 right now). Weird how the Anglophone countries take advantage of immigrants so much.

> Weird how the Anglophone countries take advantage of immigrants so much

They are more experienced. There are not so many people who want to live in Japan.

Do the Anglophone countries want high-skill immigrants who are going to bring huge economic benefits or not? Making it difficult and expensive for them to immigrate and make new homes there is counter-productive. By contrast, Japan makes it really, really easy (and cheap) to immigrate if you have highly-valued skills and a job with a high salary.

Maybe the Anglophone countries' governments are just evil and want to take advantage of the high demand by charging huge fees? But even here, it doesn't make that much sense because a lot of the total costs are for an immigration lawyer to handle the byzantine procedures, not government fees, so this just looks like corruption.

Probably just corruption.

The fees to have a work visa in EU are very low. Under 200€. However some african people I've met told me that the european embassies only accept applications through some agencies that charge 10x as much.

I can easily imagine money is changing hands there.

Wow, that seems blatantly corrupt. You shouldn't need a 3rd-party agency to submit forms to a government agency. In Japan, you just submit applications yourself. There are immigration lawyers you can use, but AFAICT they're only needed if you have some really special circumstances, or you're just too lazy (or busy) to handle the paperwork yourself. For most people, you just fill out the form, get your supporting documentation, then go wait in line at the government office for half a day.

Why did you need to spend AU$10,000?

AFAIK basically (A) Once you get PR you never have to apply for another visit visa, a process which itself is tedious and expensive if you were previously making sporadic trips; (B) You can access social services such as (internationally speaking) very high grade dirt cheap public medical care and potentially perpetual but qualified access to social services payments ("the dole"); (C) You receive discounted access to local education; (D) After another 4 years you can obtain citizenship and voting rights. (E) As an adult migrant you receive hundreds of hours of free 1:1 spoken English training.; (F) You have additional rights under law such as additional support for any prudent claim of local tax residency should that be a foreign jurisdiction's pressing concern.

So all up, not that unreasonable. Although, it is a hurdle for many people, including lots of Sydney Uber drivers I've had lately.

Full disclosure: Have done this for Oz (I recall more like AUD$8K but that was a few years back), currently going through US non-immigration visas in prospective immigration as an entrepreneur, it's a PITA. Spoke to the HN immigration lawyer dude last year. Despite good advice, our situation is not helped by certain relevant websites running on Salesforce and being down, Chrome-only, nor by 3-4 month post-COVID wait times for certain non-immigrant visa interviews required by immediate family...

It's basically the visa cost plus any other expenses (like obtaining police reports from other countries you've lived in.) The visa is currently $8085.

https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-li...

> I don't lose much besides the right to vote.

I think you mean the obligation to vote. :) Aren't you paying more in taxes and/or losing out on social benefits if ever desired? Say you want to buy a house, larger stamp duty? Have kids, less/no subsidy? Something something medicare benefits?

I can't get certain benefits like for unemployment, but can sign up to Medicare (and the age pension, in future.) Well, I can always turn to crime if I run out of money, right? Resident non-citizens can buy houses, but pay an extra tax, but there's an exemption for New Zealanders. The Australian citizen partner can help with the stamp duty reduction for first-home buyers.

>I don't lose much besides the right to vote.

The Requirement to vote :-P

That can be a bit precarious. For instance, a 444 visa can be revoked based on as little as a DV order. If it's anything like the US, david letterman got a DV order against him just for a woman thinking he was sending secret coded messages through the television.

http://www.ejfi.org/PDF/Nestler_Letterman_TRO.pdf

Absolutely, I think one guy got deported for joining an "outlaw" motorcycle club.

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