ALTHOUGH there are exceptions, by and large US immigration officials are arguably some of the rudest and most humorless of their kind anywhere in the world. Theirs is not an easy job, for sure. However, many who have watched from queues in front of immigration booths and then themselves endured the sort of quizzing that sometimes borders on the offensive, will have wondered why these officials could not be a little politer, a little more welcoming.

But then it could be argued that this is in part the official American way. The US is hardly less aggressive when it comes to law enforcement on its own people. It matters not whether a suspect is a member of a street gang or the Wall Street elite, once arrested and handcuffed, the individual is often displayed publicly to the delight of film crews and press photographers.

Yet there are surely limits to this behavior, especially when it comes to dealing with foreign diplomats. This week the Americans got it very seriously wrong over the arrest of the Indian deputy consul general in New York. Accused of relatively minor offenses relating to a visa for and the treatment of a domestic staff member, Devyani Khobragade was arrested, manacled, stripped and searched intrusively and then later thrown into a holding cell with common criminals. The US authorities maintained that diplomats have only limited immunity which does not extend to alleged breaches of US domestic law.

All of this may be perfectly accurate. Nevertheless was it really the way to treat this Indian envoy? Had not the authorities learned from two previous cases in recent years when their overbearing behavior toward two other Indian diplomats had caused considerable offense and anger?

There is of course an easy way for the hard-faced officials who ordered the treatment of Khobragade, to work out if it was the right thing to do. How would they feel if a female US diplomat, accused of breaking an Indian law, were manacled, strip-searched intimately in this humiliating fashion and then held in a cell with ordinary felons? The furious reaction in the US media would have been deafening.

And that indeed is what has happened back in India, with the deputy consul’s treatment being described as “barbaric and despicable.” The Indians are right to be outraged and to be protesting in the strongest manner. However their anger has outrun their better judgment. One of the reprisal measures that they have taken, has been to remove a security barrier around the US Embassy compound in Delhi. This is a serious miscalculation which tends to undermine the Indian government’s position and could seriously backfire. Were terrorists to take advantage of the reduction in the protection to America’s Indian diplomatic mission and launch an attack, the government’s position would be indefensible.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is seeking to mend fences by apologizing profusely for Khobragade’s treatment. That in itself will not be enough. The official oafs who treated this young woman in this fashion should not only confess their error, but should be subject to some official censure.

Nevertheless, the court case against Khobragade should proceed and if she is found to have committed an offense, she should receive whatever punishment is appropriate. It would be entirely wrong to drop the charges against her, in an attempt to appease Indian government anger. To abandon the case would suggest that the grounds which led to this young woman being treated so shamefully were themselves false. This would create yet more bad feeling.

There is of course a wider issue here, which is how Americans treat people. Here is a country which subscribes to the belief that a man is innocent until proven guilty, which handles accused people as if their crimes were already proven. Here is a country which treats foreign guests, especially people from the Muslim world, with immediate suspicion, which compounds their naturally abrupt and impolite behavior. The paranoia that produced all the extensive Homeland Security legislation and structures merely played to a tendency among US security officials to treat most everyone, including their own citizens, like dirt.

Yet those who know the States well will testify to the curious change once foreigners have passed through the Rottweilers of US immigration. In terms of generous hospitality and playing the gracious host, the Americans are outstanding. The disconnect between the private and the official faces of this nation is sometimes truly remarkable.