A first-time father, Jeremy Hockenstein headed to the Midtown field office of the Social Security Administration on March 22, the birth certificate of his newborn daughter, Orli, in hand.

While Orli was born just three months earlier, Mr. Hockenstein was intent in obtaining a Social Security number for her so he could start a college fund and claim her as a dependent on his tax return, as the law allows.

Three visits and five and a half hours of waiting later, young Orli is little closer to securing her ticket into the American federal system, and Mr. Hockenstein, 34, is fed up with what he says is an abuse of power and discrimination on the part of local SSA officials. He has sent a letter of complaint to three top SSA officials, including the agency’s regional commissioner.

“They treated me with the assumption I was committing a fraud, and nothing I could do could convince them otherwise,” Mr.Hockenstein said of his ordeal.

Parents usually can apply for Social Security numbers for their child at the hospital, but as observant Jews, the Hockensteins did not name Orli until the eighth day after her birth. Without a name, the hospital could not apply for a number.

Mr. Hockenstein said that when he brought his daughter’s birth certificate to the field office on 48th Street, he waited 90 minutes before officials told him he needed additional documents. They told him to come back with Orli’s health insurance card and her hospital vaccination records. Eight days later, Mr. Hockenstein said, he did exactly that.

After another 90-minute wait, officials rejected both documents. The insurance card was unacceptable, they told Mr. Hockenstein, because it did not have her birth date printed on it. Officials rejected the vaccination forms because they were not stamped. Mr. Hockenstein asked to speak with a supervisor, who told him to return again, this time with the Jewish equivalent of a baptismal certificate or a letter from his daughter’s doctor listing her birth date and record number.

Carrying both requested forms, Mr. Hockenstein made a third trip to the office on Monday and was rebuffed again. Officials turned down his doctor’s letter because portions of it were handwritten, he said.

And the Jewish naming certificate? Mr. Hockenstein said officials initially told him that it was an unacceptable substitute for a baptism record. Mr. Hockenstein protested, suggesting the agency was discriminating against him as a Jew. Ultimately, the office supervisor agreed to tentatively accept the naming record, but she told him it would have to go through additional review.

Procedures listed on the SSA’s Web site say that a “religious record (e.g., baptismal record)” may be used to satisfy certain requirements, but the site does not specify what other types of religious documents would be accepted or rejected.

An SSA spokeswoman, Jane Zanca, apologized for Mr. Hockenstein’s experience but said she could not comment on a specific case, citing privacy laws. She pointed to the recent implementation of a 2004 anti-terrorism law that significantly tightens the guidelines for obtaining Social Security numbers – and likely adds to the red tape.”It’s gotten progressively more difficult,” Ms. Zanca acknowledged.

Ms. Zanca said the agency would never reject a form based on religion, but with the new rules, every document is scrutinized. By law, officials must reject documents that are in any way unclear or where names don’t match, even by a single letter, she said. “If names don’t agree on everything, it’s not going to get processed,”Ms.Zanca said.”If things are handwritten, they’re always suspect.”

While Mr. Hockenstein derided officials for making arbitrary decisions, Ms. Zanca said the new regulations were designed, in part, to eliminate them. “They really don’t have any latitude,” she said. Still, Mr. Hockenstein said his case amounted to more than a simple bureaucratic nightmare. Officials, he said, had abused their power and shown “a lack of flexibility and sensitivity to people from other races and religions than they’re used to.”