I flew back to Paris from LAX last Sunday on United 932 and arrived around noon. UA flights use Satelite 1 of Terminal 1 at CDG. I got off the plane quickly and hurried to Immigration (on the "Transit" level - way before Customs, which you go through after claiming your luggage).

I found a HUGE mass of passengers waiting to funnel their way through the one immigration booth open (obviously more than a few flights had just arrived). There was no line whatsoever - just a giant blob of pax pushing and shoving and cutting into the "line". (Theodore Zeldin, an Oxford historian who studies France, once likened a French line to a triangle: the base of the triangle is the front of the line and the tip of the triangle is the back).

Anyhow, CDG 1 is circular and my jet-lagged brain lurched into action: I remembered that the other times this had happened I did a 180° half-lap around the terminal and found a second, empty and well-staffed Immigration station.

The two Immigration and Passport Control stations are on oppsite sides of each other - if one seems really busy, chances are the other isn't (this has always been my experience). The same trick applies for departures from CDG : you must go through Passport Control to leave France, and there are often crowds at one station and not at the other one half way around the circular terminal.

To make my above rambling even more coherent, here is a map from CDG's web site:

http://www.adp.fr/webadp/a_cont01.ns...if?OpenElement

The map is about as confusing as my post, but if you look at the diagram of the "Transfer Level", you will see two candy-cane striped areas exactly opposite of each other.

That's Immigration, there are two stations, if one is horribly crowded, try the other.