I can completely understand what you're talking about in this article although that myself personally but a coworker.

I often had to travel to McAllen Texas to go across the border into Reynosa to visit my supplier plant. One of the project Engineers I worked with actually lived in the US and had a three-year visa to cross the border. Every time I visited him across to Mexico and back - at least once during the week of 5 days I was there he would get stopped, told to get out of his car go into the office. I'd be sitting outside waiting for over an hour as they took their time getting around to looking at his visa and his passport,then asking him why he had a 3-year visa when the US only gave out two year visas. He told them “you're the ones that gave me the Visa”! This was repeated every time I visited him- about every 3 months -and I'm sure it happened to him when I wasn't there as well.