That may be a solution, but I'm never going to have the time to do that personally.
There's also the general concern -- although I don't know if it's ever been proven to have happened anywhere -- of border agents installing tracking software / malware. They often take the phone out of sight for a while. This is probably more of an issue with Android phones but again if you are a journalist or human rights activist or anyone with legitimate reasons to be concerned, I would absolutely want to wipe the phone as soon as possible after a border crossing if agents had forced me to hand it over for inspection.
I agree with both you and the parent poster. It's sad that we're paying a privacy tax on something that should be constitutionally protected.