jerryhung

Only works if EVERYONE has NEXUS/GE

I have NEXUS but family doesn't (not yet anyway due to residency requirement), and there's no "baby-friendly" lanes either

Yes, GE line was absolutely empty at ORD @@ but there's no point for me to use GE if I have to wait for the slowest person (my wife?) anyway :P

arf04

One thing I learned last time I was through ORD was that sometimes they will let Canadian passport holders use the US passport holders line. It may look long but it moves very quickly compared to the other line. My first trip through there we went to the non-US line and waited a long time due to amount of processing that happened with many of the Asian passengers. After that, an attendant actually directed us to the US line and said Canadians were ok there. The immigration officer certainly did not care. We were through in about 15 minutes. I'm pretty sure this is normal procedure, but I haven't been through ORD enough times to have a big enough data set to know for sure. I usually go through DEN, which is quite efficient.

jerryhung

Funny you mentioned it, because it was inconsistent at best at ORD
1. 2 hours later a lady walked by with [Kitchener] sign (not sure why), looking for paxs in line (probably because of baggages still unclaimed). Then she asked if Canadian passport, some in front of us said YES, and she took them out, only to the head of the [Visitor] line.
In reality, the girl we talked to (from Guelph) is only 1-2 person ahead of us by the time we get to our line, even when she cut in about 10 people

2. No, Canadian PR is not Canadian passport, so cannot cut ahead or use US citizen line.... I'd think Canadian+PR is really almost the same as USA Citizen+Resident

3. In short, US immigration sucks, especially with lots of difficult paxs (Asian, middle east paxs). The officer that saw us even joke-ish confirmed it when he intentionally left a China pax standing there, looking for a translator (not anyone who can translate, but has to be from AA)... only because he claimed he said English, but said "What?" when officer asked him some tougher questions. Meanwhile, some Chinese grandparents who don't speak any English got by, with help of stranger pax's translation help

arf04

Right, Canadian PR will be more complicated. The Visitor line is tough. The one time we were there we witnessed a very old Vietnamese woman with her daughter dealing with the immigration officer. Neither spoke much English and the old woman didn't have a passport. The immigration guy couldn't figure out how she got there without a passport, so it took like 10 minutes for him to deal with them before he sent them on.

I agree that immigration at ORD is not the best. I too would choose preclearance if it were an option. At DEN, however, immigration is terrific. They're efficient, friendly, and they really move people through. Usually, it's just us from YQR so 50 people at most, but every once in a while in summer you might get a couple of large TATL flights, but the lineup still moves along quickly.