Your point of entry, which you may not have much choice over, will have a significant effect on how painless an experience entry is into the US. In the last couple of years I've gone in through MIA, LAX and IAH, none of them being particularly pleasant with the latter taking the longest.. walk off the plane to jumping in the Taxi - a little over 2 hours in the middle of the day... Total sense of humour failure about being queried about the accuracy of the Zip Code on my Immigration Form... What's that got to do with anything?... As a family we used to go to the US regularly on holiday - now we avoid it and the weakness of the $ is not incentive enough... way too much travel hassle, which is a shame 'cos it's a great place to visit.