I recently arrived at OAK from Europe and was surprised to see that US residents and foreign visitors are in the same line and don’t get split up until at the very end. Certainly many locations have two lines from the get-go.

And even though a fellow travel companion with a green card had scanned his documentation and his fingers at the machine, he had to do it again later at the staff counter.

Maybe the redundancy was due to the transition to a new system, a new federal standard? Which could explain why the staff wasn’t interested in the customs form you filled out before landing.

And the signs were horrible. Citizens vs visitors, it said at the line split towards the end. What are you to do being a permanent resident?

At each staff counter, a sign instructed you to wait behind the line on the floor, while it probably meant for you to stay on front of it, on this side. Isn’t behind enemy lines on the other side?