or did your narrow minded viewpoint present itself naturally for immigration officers to pounce upon?
A little harsh without knowing the details I think. I haven't always been an 'Airline driver' and have had the priviledge to serve with the armed forces in the past, including excercises and operations with the Americans. Rather than see this for what it was I had to endure a grilling at the embassy as I declared my previous 'life' weapons training. Was that necessary? No, not really. Does it happen every day? Probably not but that was my experience. (much imporved for the renewal I might add)
The problems with the immigration staff do not necessarily need to be me, or my 'narrow minded' viewpoint but the crew under my responsibility. I have found that almost 7 times out of 10 I have had to go to secondary clearance in order to support my crew in US airports. I have also seen immigration staff deliberately force the crew to wait as one passenger out of 250 had failed to fill out the immigration form which the staff took to be indicative of the crew not performing their duties correctly.
My point was simply observing that the 'petty pointless rules' that a previous poster alluded to in the UK also exist in the US and are not the sole preserve of the UK.