It’s really not. That is 5 years (two if you came for a degree), which is the time after which you’re supposed to be acquainted with the language and the culture (which is fair enough). The delays are after that to get appointments and stuff. These are purely a consequence of the bureaucratic process, which is quite arbitrary in its implementation (as an example, depending on your country of origin you might have to go to different offices, which process files at very different speeds).
