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from the what-happens-underground-stays-underground dept.
girlwhowaspluggedout writes:
"The US Border Patrol has a new tool in its battle against the tunnels that are used to smuggle in drugs from Mexico. Since the cartels' diggers operate outside the range of the agency's cameras, motions detectors, and drones, and because filling the tunnels with concrete hasn't stopped the smugglers, the US Border Patrol now regularly employs robots to search through the underground drug trafficking routes.
The Border Patrol operates four remote-controlled robots along the US-Mexico border. Three of the four are assigned to its station in Nogales, Arizona, the final destination for most of the tunnels that have been discovered so far near the southern border. The agency's robots, which include Applied Research Associates' Pointman Tactical Robot and Inuktun Services' Versatrax 300, can easily fit in closed quarters. The tunnel that the Border Patrol shut down last month, for example though it was equipped with electric lighting, ventilation fans, and wood shoring was only 3 feet and high 2 feet wide. It spanned a whopping 481 feet, the largest tunnel discovered in Nogales by the Border Patrol.
The robots' ability to travel through areas where the air is unsafe to breath for extended periods is especially valuable in Nogales, AZ, whose popularity with drug smugglers is due to its sewer system, which is easily accessible from the adjacent city of Heroica Nogales, Mexico."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Barrabas on Tuesday February 25 2014, @01:10PM
As I understand it the problem is exacerbated by companies that want to hire the illegal workers, but are never penalized for doing so. It's always immigrants that bear the brunt of enforcement while we provide the incentive for them to come.
Is this correct?
Why can't we just let them in to become citizens? Our population growth rate is lower than the replacement rate [google.com], so population isn't an issue, and statistically they don't contribute to crime. Immigration has always helped us in the past (refer: the 1920's), and having hard-working people that pay taxes seems like a win all around.
Oh, except for those pesky businesses who want to hire illegals at a reduced rate. They would be inconvenienced a little, I suppose.
This cycle of human suffering has always bothered me. Can anyone explain a logical reason not to just fast-track them in as citizens?
(Score: 1) by etherscythe on Tuesday February 25 2014, @04:19PM
Social services costs will drive up tax burdens on the incumbent citizens. We already have immigrants (both legal and not) coming over, having children, and having their medical bills subsidized by the government because:
a) hospitals can't turn away anyone even if they can't pay, and
b) we don't want hospitals going out of business
So, to make immigration self-sustainable, we may have to require many applicants to obtain a work or other visa and demonstrate they can pull their weight in society. If you can do that I have no problem with fast-track citizenship, but given the illegal worker market driving down wages for citizens and the crime issues (think drug cartels) which exist at least in border states, I'm not inclined to just throw the doors wide open. I do think that as long as the laws are being suitably enforced that we should welcome immigration; some of our brightest scholars and productive workers come from out of country. However, we aught to be careful we don't turn into one giant bread line. We're already playing World Cop and that's more than we should be doing already.
I think the businesses need to be responsible for verifying their workers are eligible to work i.e. have a proper SSN (that matches their photo ID) and so on, and there need to big penalties for improper hiring practices. Remove the profit incentive and the behavior will vanish, at least where it mostly counts. I don't know why we're not doing this more; it takes all kinds of money to process (i.e. feed and clothe in jail) and possibly deport individual people, who probably have very little money to soak in fines and court fees. Businesses, on the other hand, have bank accounts, larger cash reserves, and ongoing transactions to garnish from. Is somebody getting bribes on this?
(Score: 1) by adolf on Wednesday February 26 2014, @05:29AM
Eh?
Which, I think, is obviously preferable to letting people die just over there, across the street.
But where are the government subsidies for hospitals to cover the indigent and illegal? I can't tell if I'm playing the devil's advocate or my own advocate just now, because from what I've seen, it works like this:
1. Broken (sick/mangled) person enters hospital, turns out to also be broke. Hospital treats them (which they should do, always), and tries to get them to pay the bill.
2. Patient doesn't pay the bill.
3. The hospital -- not the government -- eats the bill, or sends the bill onto legal wherein:
4. Lawsuits happen. And then
5. Patient still does not pay the bill, and they have no assets to seize to pay the bill with.
6. The hospital eats the bill. Everyone else pays a higher price to keep the hospital's lights on, and their employees fed.
Am I missing a step somewhere about how things actually work?
(As a disclaimer: I'm all in favor of public, free healthcare -- whatever the cost. I've got a big problem with the notion of letting humans die of curable things just because of money...which we seem to be able to print plenty of to cover wars and killing people, but not very much for saving people.)
So where we we? Oh yeah! Tunnels. I like Minecraft.
I'm wasting my days as I've wasted my nights and I've wasted my youth
(Score: 1) by etherscythe on Thursday February 27 2014, @04:15PM
The federal Disproportionate Share Hospital [wikipedia.org] program is what I'm talking about.
Yes, the hospital eats some of it, too. And our costs go up at every step, because complexity breeds waste. I also agree that we should not let people just die on the streets; that's unsanitary and asking for plagues to break out, not to mention the ethical problems.
Either way, the citizens already in-country are being burdened with the services to those who are not productive members of society.
(Score: 1) by adolf on Thursday February 27 2014, @07:13PM
Which, I think, is exactly how it should be.
I'm wasting my days as I've wasted my nights and I've wasted my youth
(Score: 1) by etherscythe on Thursday February 27 2014, @08:13PM
I agree there should be a safety net. I think we also agree that simply enforcing existing laws with sensible policies is mostly the best way to go as far as correcting the undocumented worker problem.
However, my original point was, not everybody is inclined to pull their weight and, not to be heartless or anything, but I don't know that we need to let in just *anybody*. I'd rather an immigrant show they have some kind of responsibility or useful skill. I might give an immediate pass to a college degree, for example, particularly to someone on a student visa graduating from a US institution. Successful history of paying taxes on a work visa would be another consideration.
Long story short, let's not allow ourselves to collapse under the overburden of an unsustainable immigration policy - it might be to everyone's benefit to instead provide through our foreign aid programs to developing countries, particularly given that much of the tax burden falls on the middle-to-low class workers anyway.
(Score: 1) by adolf on Thursday February 27 2014, @08:43PM
But if we only let smart and talented people in, then all we really do is decrease the wages of the smart and talented people who are already citizens. We've already got enough people with college degrees working as highly-educated, under-employed line cooks.
It takes all kinds of people to have a healthy and functional society -- Rome needs ditch diggers, too. And I don't think ditch that digging should be a job solely reserved for native-born Americans.
That all said, I'm not exactly suggesting that the gates be thrown wide open for anyone who can muster their way across the river. There are some people (convicted violent criminals, for instance) who we might be better off without, but even they ought to have an opportunity to demonstrate that they've grown beyond that phase in their life and are now good-natured, productive people.
And I think that enough English to be conversational and read/write directions should be implicit, as well as a demonstration basic understanding of our legal system and general expectations and civic responsibilities, so they've got a fair shot at being useful people in the US.
I'm wasting my days as I've wasted my nights and I've wasted my youth
(Score: 1) by etherscythe on Thursday February 27 2014, @08:58PM
I specifically mentioned the work visa for this reason; I don't really care what kind of work, just demonstrate somehow that you can be responsible on some level. So, in short, I think we are in complete agreement.
(Score: 1) by adolf on Thursday February 27 2014, @10:53PM
Only if we grant work visas for ditch diggers.
I'm wasting my days as I've wasted my nights and I've wasted my youth
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 25 2014, @04:44PM
Our population growth rate is lower than the replacement rate, so population isn't an issue, and statistically they don't contribute to crime. Immigration has always helped us in the past (refer: the 1920's)
Which possibly contributed to a certain happening in 1929 (although from what I've read, the disparity between the rich and everyone else was the major cause).
But yeah, they want to hire illegals because they can pay them below minimum wage under the table.
Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
(Score: 1) by adolf on Wednesday February 26 2014, @05:03AM
While I realize that the US is a nation of immigrants and I'm chiefly in favor of allowing more (a lot more) immigration, especially with our peaceful neighbors to the north and to the south...that's an unpopular way to go about things. The people in power here seem to be of a "what's mine is mine, and if you don't have one too, you should just work harder" sort of mindset (as if we can all, somehow, be overachievers).
So while your opinion is a demonstrably unpopular one, I think that mine is probably even less popular:
If immigration is a problem because unwanted people are finding jobs better jobs here than they do there, then just take away the jobs. Tell Joe the Farmer that he can't hire Juan, his undocumented tomato picker, anymore.
Also, too: Tell Jane the Housewife that she can't hire Jaunita the undocumented housekeeper.
As the lucrative jobs disappear (and "lucrative" has very different meanings when money crosses borders), then folks will tend to stop tunneling their way north.
(If that's too much hardship for Joe and Jane, then perhaps Joe and Jane should re-evaluate their opinions on open immigration.
Just sayin'.)
I'm wasting my days as I've wasted my nights and I've wasted my youth