I recently returned from a trip to Europe, so I had a chance to personally experience the performance of our homeland security people at the entry point. I did not experience any arrogance or impolite behavior from the TSA screeners, the passport control officers or the customs inspectors. In fact, some of the TSA employees were actually friendly and courteous. One of them even joked around while screening our carry-on luggage.
At the passport control point, I went through the section reserved for US residents and did not experience the section reserved for non-US residents. I did, however, notice that the wait for the non-US residents was shorter than the wait for US residents. Foreign visitors were being screened more quickly than us US residents.
I was certainly disappointed with the mindless bureaucratic inconvenience of it all. We had to wait in line nearly 20 minutes to see the passport control officer. He scanned our electronically encoded passport into his computer which should have given him all the information required to see who we are, when we left the country and how long we were gone. Never the less, he slowly asked us his inane questions, "How long have you been gone?", "What countries did you visit?", "Did you bring any foods or agricultural products?", "Did you bring any alcohol?" After delaying us for five or six minutes, while hundreds of other passengers awaited their turn to answer the same inane questions, he handed back our passports.
We then retreived our luggage and had to stand in a 50-meter long queu waiting to see the single customs control officer. He simply looked at our declaration form, which had every item that we had purchased abroad listed on it; and asked us, "How long have you been gone?", "Did you bring any foods or agricultural products?", "Did you bring any alcohol?" I wanted to say, "Just read the declaration form in your hand dummy"; but my common sense told me that that would probably result in an even longer delay. I simply answered his inane questions and we passed on to the terminal.
We were now out in the general terminal outside of the security area, so we had to pass back through the TSA security screeners to get to our connecting flight. All in all, It was a very tedious and frustrating experience that I was not pleased to endure after an exhausting nine-hour flight.
In summary, the TSA screeners and the other homeland security personnel were not rude or inconsiderate, they simply behaved like mindless bureaucratic robots in a Kafka like process that seems to be designed without much consideration for the travelers' convenience.