teeman

This is very true. As a non-US citizen who goes to the US a lot, I make a point to try to be at the front of the plane, and literally run from the plane to immigration. With all the fingerprinting and procedures you must go through, every person you pass will save you at least 3-5 minutes.

In my experience, the key is to overtake the following types of people, as they take a very long time:
- students. students who enter for the first time takes a long time to clear immigration because their extra documentation needs to be verified and validated, especially after 9-11.
- people who have lots of extra documentation with their passports. these may be asylum cases, or folks entering on other uncommon or complex visas that requires the immigration officer to do a lot more work to validate these documents before they can admit them
- people who hold passports from countries that are less common or from less developed countries. Unfortunately, even if its subconscious, I find that immigration officers tend to take a lot longer to admit someone who holds, say, a Ghanaian passport than someone who holds a German passport.