Justin Bieber is set to become a US citizen

TMZ reports that Justin will retain his Canadian citizenship but is seeking to also become an American citizen as he lives in the US and has a deep appreciation for the country where he "became extremely rich and successful".

Justin will have to subject himself to a background check by the FBI and fingerprinting and he will have to sit a citizenship interview.

If he is successful, he will attend an oath ceremony and pledge allegiance to the US.

Meanwhile, Justin's manager Scooter Braun recently admitted he thought the star was "going to die" when he was going through a rough patch in 2014.

The singer suffered a string of negative incidents including arrests for assault, driving offences and vandalism between 2013 and 2014, and Scooter said he used to have a recurring nightmare in which the 'Sorry' hitmaker died during one of his escapades.

Scooter said: "There was a time when I would go to sleep almost every night - when he had the money to fly away from me - and I was worried every night that I was going to lose him.

"I thought he was going to die. I thought he was going to sleep one night and that he would have so much crap in his system that he would not wake up the next morning."

Now Justin has turned his life around, and Scooter insists that it was the star's own decision to get help.

He said: "I think he made a conscious choice for himself to change, I think for a year and a half I failed miserably trying to help him, because for year and a half he didn't change ... It wasn't until one day he woke up and said, 'Hey I need to talk to you, I don't want to be that person anymore.'

"[He's an] extraordinary young man who's been given an extraordinary life. And he used to complain, and he used to fight it and that's when he got into a dark place, but when he accepted his responsibility and took a hard look at himself and not what everyone was doing, that's when he owned it and he got healthy."