I agree that US migration processes are a bureaucratic nightmare also. I don't think it's an exaggeration when I phrase the term as 'overly unnecessary bureaucratic process that causes people incredible frustration'.
Note that the OP said that the list was the effort of months of trying to understand and negotiate the system. Just because it appears to be 'a couple of web forms and email verification', it's in no way similar to signing up for a web site because it's behind so much opacity. You can't judge the effort involved in producing something simply by its final output.
