It doesn't have to literally take the form of "hey, we can scare people off by making the forms longer! And my mustache is twirlier today!"
Rather, it's more like: with a reasonable flow of applicants, they can be lax in checking them, and maybe call the applicant if they need to get more information or something doesn't look right.
But as the influx gets too large, they have to adopt an attitude of "give us everything we might possibly need to validate you, the first time around, or we can't afford to process it". They may not be deliberately trying to scare people off, but the massive influx does lead, somehow, to ever longer forms.
Rather, it's more like: with a reasonable flow of applicants, they can be lax in checking them, and maybe call the applicant if they need to get more information or something doesn't look right.
But as the influx gets too large, they have to adopt an attitude of "give us everything we might possibly need to validate you, the first time around, or we can't afford to process it". They may not be deliberately trying to scare people off, but the massive influx does lead, somehow, to ever longer forms.