Last weekend, I landed at Miami International Airport after spending a week in Cuba. My tour-mates, tired and bedraggled from a week crammed with activities, dutifully queued up behind a long line at Immigration. I breezed through Immigration, collected my luggage, took the Green lane at Customs, and was checked into my airport hotel room...

I regularly fly through Houston’s IAH airport when I’m returning from travel to Central and South America, and lately, I’ve been running into brochures for the Global Entry Trusted Traveler Program . Enrolling allows members to speed past those horribly long immigration lines, and check in at a kiosk instead, currently available at 20 airports...