I must say my experience of US immigration is not great either. I had to wait in line for almost two hours at JFK just to pass through immigration when I was last there; while in the queue a number of Spanish speakers (I was coming from Argentina) tried to ask the woman who was marshaling the queue something in Spanish, she replied that this was the USA and that they should try and learn English...
Quite ironic considering the friendly image of US immigration personal being played over and over again on the TV screens in the hall we were in...
When I was coming to the US to do my FAA IR in 2008 entering at Miami at first the guy refused to believe my I-20 form was the original, he kept claiming that it was a copy, despite it obviously not being. Eventually some sort of supervisor came who agreed that yes it was an original. I had no problem with this as such but the guy who dealt with me was incredibly off hand and made no attempt to be polite or appear helpful.
I love the US a lot (my girlfriend is American) but the immigration desk is the first contact with authority when one enters the country and the first impression a visitor gets of it...too often recently it has been a bad one...which is a shame.