This reminds me of bureaucracy in India. As a foreign-born Indian I tried to get an OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) which is akin to a lifetime visa nowadays.

This reminds me of bureaucracy in India. As a foreign-born Indian I tried to get an OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) which is akin to a lifetime visa nowadays. As part of the documentation they eventually required my father's birth certificate (since he surrendered his original passport). The city did manage to find his records even though he was born near the time of the partition/independence. However, they required a letter from his birth parents who were long since deceased. They just didn't have the logic in their system to understand this was a possibility and know what to do.