I wouldn't worry too much about it -- most every foreign-national other than me has had no problems getting in for the program. I think I just ran into a couple bad border officials. Perhaps I was even over-transparent the first time. By having so much documentation prepared, maybe I made myself look suspicious.
I did an internship last year in Washington so I drove back-n-forth a lot with my friends and other students from UBC and SFU. Boy... all of us hate dealing with US immigration officers.
Earlier this year, I had to go to US for a business trip. Things haven't changed. They're still the same Fat, Oily haired, snobbish, and stupid border officers.
I remember couple months ago I saw a blog post saying that they didn't know what MacBook Air was so they thought it was a bomb or something.
Trust me, you're wrong about "bad border officials." And having been in that room (at a different airport) 3 times, you also downplay the unpleasantness of it. I'm curious if you went through the fingerprint/mugshot process - can't remember if they bring that out on the first refusal or not.
Anyway everytime you get refused they seem to amp up the harassment. I'm reasonably sure if I tried to reapply, they'd be doing body-cavity searches.
You are 100% right about the unpleasantness of the entire ordeal. They did do the fingerprint, mugshot deal... but until I realized that he was going to refuse entry, I was being optimistic for some reason.
I did go easy on them in this article... perhaps as a reflection of my own paranoia about getting back in when I need to... I had mental images of 5 idle border officials googling my name as I sat in the waiting room.
