> Australian citizenship is profoundly valuable.

Getting where I am now (Australian permanent resident) has been the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.

It included working casual night-shift jobs while studying to get a uni degree during the day (having an Australian degree improves your score towards a skilled visa).

For a long period I have been separated from my wife and daughter due to visa complications, it was heartbreaking.

In addition I had to give up my role as a start-up co-founder (because in order to maximise your skilled visa score, it's better if you are an employee at an Australian-based company - the start-up I was involved with was legally based overseas).

I haven't even visited my home country (Italy) since 2013, I am still in touch with family and some friends but the reality is that the connection to Italy is slowly fading away and I am long past that phase where you start to call your adoptive country "home".

Becoming an Australian citizen has been the main goal of my life in the past 8 years so I'm not going to pass on it lightly. At the moment, however, I'm taking my time to think about it.

One more piece of Anecdata, Im an Australian who has decided to go for US citizenship, for several reasons but all basically due to a continuous disregard for personal liberties by our government. Australians love being told what to do, seems like 90% of the population are very satisfied to be servants of the ruling class and aspire to nothing else.

Edit: I replied to the wrong comment, meant to reply to the one above this one.

Are you going to renounce your Australian citizenship?

Good luck getting health care.

Any australian working in the US that is able to obtain PR or citizenship likely has a well paid job that provides health insurance. While I feel for the folks in the US without coverage, lack of access to affordable health care does not really apply to employed, skilled immigrants. In my experience US health care is the best on the planet, its also the most expensive.

From my perspective, US health care is way above the quality of healthcare in Australia. Price, not so much...

Anecdotally calling something the best on the planet is absurd. Have you tried every health care system, or simply believe USA #1?

Australia has a very high standard health care system. Probably on a par with the UK and the U.S.

Given that insurance companies will soon be excluding "pre-existing conditions", there's a good chance you can't get insurance under a corporate plan anyway.

> But don't kid yourself: Australian citizenship is profoundly valuable.

Relative to what other citizenship?

It depends on your criteria. But it's a wealthy country with a high standard of living, relatively safe and stable, with well-established democratic and legal systems, has relatively low corruption, safety nets for health and welfare, subsidised education and if you avoid the crocodiles it can be very pleasant in parts.

Canada meets a lot of these criteria, though the climate may not agree with everyone--though at least we don't have a plant that causes you to suicide yourself (gympie-gympie)

* https://curiosity.com/topics/the-suicide-plant-has-the-most-... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrocnide_moroides

Wow, I'm Australian and I'd never heard of that plant.

Also, Australia ranks well above the USA on most indices of economic freedom.

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom

This is put out by the Heritage Foundation. You may want to read up on their ideologies before deciding that a rating of "good" from them is something you actually want to achieve.

For example, their affiliations are: Republican Party, Thatcherism, Reaganomics.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation

Even a broken clock is right twice a day (as the saying goes), but I'm not sure I'd really strongly rely on their policy ideas.

> well-established democratic and legal systems

Given the topic at hand, this doesn't seem like a distinct strength of Australia, unless you're coming from a despotic regime or recently New Zealand.

I think it's important to have some context here though. I can't speak for the parent commenter, but I am Australian and how I interpreted it was that our democratic system is reasonably mature, functional, and relatively free from large scale corruption.

I think the last point is the big one. Political lobbying, while still a thing, isn't as rampant as in the US for example. Bad power-grab legislation like the bill being discussed still happen, as do bad laws as a result of general incompetence, but in my experience there are far less laws that happen as a result of corporate lobbying.

A good example is the Australian tax system. There is a government provided website for filing your individual income tax return. For the vast majority of people it is prefilled, takes about 5 mins, and it's also free for everyone. Contrast this with the US where companies like Intuit lobby specifically to keep the tax code complex and to require returns prepared online be submitted through one of them so they can collect their fees.

> Bad power-grab legislation like the bill being discussed still happen, as do bad laws as a result of general incompetence, but in my experience there are far less laws that happen as a result of corporate lobbying.

I think I care a bit less about corporate welfare lobbying than infringements on my civil rights. You can fix corporate lobbying if you have real civil rights, but if you don't have the right to communicate privately, the corporations can literally just stop you from organizing, with the littlest nudges (just make the messages of dissent mysteriously not deliver). It might not even be illegal.