I'm in a similiar sitation as the parent, As an American living in Japan, married to a Japanese national, Japan treats me with respect and courtesy with very little stress or hassle if any, at the airport.

Outside of the airport is another story. My wife though has not had any problems at immigration and we regularly enter at LAX. She also has a green card.

I'm surprised that they hassled his wife or asked how much money she had on her, wierd.

But this whole pre-registering thing is just plain stupid and other countries should do the same, so the stupid US government will drop this nonsense.

Well, I don't have a degree, but I spent about 6 years in college, studying applied mathematics, physics and computer science.
  I never finished mainly due to a liberal arts requirement, lack of money and a lucrative job years ago in visual effects. But I never
stopped educating or training myself. Everything from Veritas cluster, LInux/Solaris internals classes to management classes.

I've been working as a senior Unix engineer/administrator for over 15 years and currently I am vice president of Unix engineering at an investment bank.

So far this has never been a problem, so far, knock on wood. The last two jobs I've had required a degree, my current required a MS or MBA. But my supervisors were happy with my interview, my references and my experience and would deal with HR to get me on board.

But I would NEVER, EVER recommend the path I've taken for anyone. If you are relatively young, go (back?) to school and at least get your
Associates and take some related classes and do what you can to get some experience.

That being said, I never usually look at someone's education, unless they have little or no experience and even then, I look
for people who are willing to learn, have a genuine interest and curiosity in the work and a good personality.

It is true you can't learn system administration in school, but you can learn the foundations for a lot of the things you do as
you advance in your career. I've used the basics I've learned in my OS courses and have applied concepts from algorithm classes
as I have done more at some of my employers than just bread and butter SA work, including systems programming.

But I've been looking at finishing my degree for sometime now, just need to find a few cycles. Considering a
degree in management, finishing my applied math degree or a comp sci degree.

Good luck to you.

... Now how in the world am I going to get a date!

Last girl I dated from craigslist told me to drink a lot of pineapple juice...
and bring plenty of roses. :-D