Lots of countries have stupid laws. Here’s one from Canada, eh.
There’s an estimated group of 10,000 to 20,000 Canadians who have been Canadians for many, many years, and some nearly all their lives. Then they find out when they’re applying for Canadian passports for travel to the USA that since they spent their 24th birthday outside Canada, and didn’t submit a proper notification that they were outside Canada, according to an obscure provision in Canada’s Citizenship Law which applied from 1947 to 1977...these people lost their Canadian citizenship, eh.
So they have to reapply as (get this) “landed immigrants” just to start all over again. And they were apparently never told to submit the forms. What a bunch of bulls**t, eh.
Fortunately, the Canadian Government realized this foobar and has accelerated the process for these “Lost Canadians” to just eight months, down from three years. They could always make it faster: if the House of Commons just automatically reinstated their Canadian citizenship immediately, that would be the Right Thing to do. Then again, they have to feed that giant bureaucratic monster on Parliament Hill, eh.