Jcleppe,
Ha! I am going to do one up on you in the bureaucratic nightmare department.
My husband and I are both first generation immigrant. He has relatives in three continents, and he have been to 50+ countries.
During the application process, he was supposed to supply ALL the dates of departure from USA, entries into other countries (and which country), and re-entry into USA for last five years. There were many trips when we covered 4-5 countries at a time. Now, we never kept an exel spreadsheet on this. The only way to "recreate" this in a chronological order was to look at his two passports, and examine every single entry/exit seal from all the governments involved in his trips last few years. Now, those of you who travel a lot, you know that custom agents do NOT fill passport page carefully one page at a time. They put their stamp on WHICHEVER page that happens to open conveniently for them. So you have to examine every single seal, compare the country, and date scattered all over the passport. Sometimes they put the stamp on top of older stamps since his passport pages were running out of space. His passports were at home when he had to supply this info. I decided to do him a favor. Rather than just sending him the passports (expired and new), I spent a day on a weekend to stitch it all together, and send the spreadsheet. What a nightmare. It was the only time I assisted him throughout the paper work process.
Then, he had to go through a security clearance. AND, the biggest item that immediately lights up on their radar scan is CONTACTS WITH FOREIGN NATIONALS. Both my husband and I are naturalized, but are we foreign nationals too based on the place of birth? Any way, his entire family from both sides are foreign nationals. What do ya know? It took forever for him to get the security clearance! He told me he had to answer an endless medley of questions regarding when and where you met these unsavory characters, the status of relationships now. the last contact. Phone calls? Email? Face to face? And, a real kicker! Especially worrisome are the foreign nationals who were in the past or currently related to their government. My father was a general, a governor of a state, and a government minister. My husband was a fighter pilot in his original home country air force. Oy, vey!
After all this, he joked that there is this really cute girl on his form floor, but he suspects she may have been born in a foreign country, and he dares not strike a conversation lest it registers as yet another CONTACT WITH A FOREIGN NATIONAL. His aunt and uncle are visiting this spring while he is on a spring break, and he think we should build a Chinese wall around the guest bedroom.
Ditto with the rest of the story about birth certificates, passports, etc. Poor kid, the amount of paperwork he had to do during last 5 since started on the program qualifies for a full semester course in government affairs! I do say though, it's part of the growing up and learning process. I applaud him for methodically going through all this, but I know it was a ton of work on his part.
So, if you have a youngster with a plan for CULP or whatever related to the government security clearance, raise him/her like Rapunzel: lock him/her up in a tower and kick off the ladder.