It's going to be like that for the EU from October (fingerprints, photo first time of entry) because we are now like any other 3rd country who can get a visa waiver (ETIAS is pretty similar to ESTA, and the UK is doing something similar as well
It's all about planning though with NYC... flying in, make sure your seat is on the left side of the plane as near the exit as possible (we were front of the queue in 2016), and at Brooklyn self disembarking seems to be the way to go (though we did ok at the front of timed disembarkation queue)