I flew to New Zealand on Air NZ back in 2005. Unfortunately there's a stop off in LA to refuel and change crew. Everyone is taken off the plane and corralled into a holding area with not enough seats and horribly stained walls. There is no humour from the immigration officials who escort you through a myriad of corridors to this zone.

Then you're marched out in batches and electronically finger printed/eyeball scanned by more humourless uniformed officials before being deposited back in the holding area to await your onward journey. It was a demeaning experience and I wasn't even visiting the US. Technically I haven't entered the US, how do they get away with that?

This contrasted heavily to my previous arrival on US soil (Boston in 2002) which was pretty straight forward - visa waiver (I'm a UK citizen) thing during final approach on plane and traditional show your passport procedure at immigration and off you go.

Upon arrival in Auckland the only grilling we got was from a bunch of cheerful bio-security folks, with a cute sniffer dog, who wanted to make sure we didn't have any fresh food in our bags and that our footwear wasn't caked in dirt/earth (which could potentially harbour unwanted seeds or spores).

After my 2005 experience I decided that won't be visiting the US again, I'll stick to travelling in the EU.