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High School Kids Beat MIT at Robotics Competition
An anonymous writer submitted a story saying "A bunch of bright high school kids from Carl Hayden Highschool beat out MIT in a Marine Technology Center's Robotics competition.
Here are additional details of the competition."
Here come the Aquadorks!
must attend high school somewhere. Right?
I think MIT should be sending these kids scholarships right about now if they wanna save any sort of face.
MIT students have access to higher quality chemistry supplies anf facilities to synthesize their preferred extracurricular activity accelerators.
-mkb
"Talent" is not something exclusive to MIT people.
Before this deteriorates in to a Pro/Anti Immigration flame fest, I cannot but feel awe for these four kids who braced odds to be where they are at now. And to know that the odds piled up against their favor include being alien, poor, living in gang infested streets and yet be capable of this?
For one, I hope the media picks this up, not just Wired. I hope they get as much visibility as they can, on their plight, the lives they live and their achievements. We have all heard and read of ordinary people who surmounted amazing odds to claim their personal victories, but seemingly they happen far less and few in between. What this country need to know is despite poverty, crime and the potential to go wrong, not one, but four kids chose the right, but tough path. And they should be commended for that till kingdom come.
But for what we have seen, the INS would pick them up next week and hand them back to a grateful Mexico.
Rapid Nirvana
Even granting that, it would indicate that said MIT education didn't make them any better. And think, all those student loans for nothing? ;)
Obviously the entire story is somewhat facetious.
"High School Kids Beat MIT..."
I would think the MIT crowd would be used to beatings by now.
Probably a parent, coach or teacher/sponsor.
That will teach MIT not to let high school kids compete in the future.
I mean seriously, how many marshmellows can these kids shove up their nostrils?
Lets do some real college science. MIT is too busy building the worlds tallest and most complex beer bong. Now THAT'S cool.
Hey, you can't blame MIT for getting intimidated. These kids sound rough. Cape Fear Community College came in third.
looks like he's a ringer
Dick Laurent is dead.
Please remember Rob is going through a divorce. He's not entirely focused on his work at the moment.
Some of you will take glee in this but I'm hoping the bulk sympathize.
Wait until the high school kids try to get into MIT...
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
I manage a team of 10 to 20 engineers, the number depends on the work load. In the past few years, I have had 5 engineers on my team that graduated from MIT. The MIT's were usually the first engineers to be replaced, I have not been impressed!
These kids are exactly the kind of people we should be encouraging to come to this country; smart, clever, hard-working, creative.
Yet they are here illegally, and something needs to be done about that. If these kids are as smart as the article suggests (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), attaining citizenship shouldn't be particularly taxing.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
RTFA, unless someone with $ steps up to the plate these are not future MIT students. They are currently in manual labor jobs and likely to stay there.
These students come from disadvantaged backgrounds and are unable to get into MIT. Half of them have graduated and they are not getting further education as they cannot afford it.
Back in the 90's... There MUST be other /.ers that called back in the day. It's been a tech magnet school for a while.
But it was a fanstastic showing from a minority kid igh school!
I went to this very school for their computer program from 1986 to 1990. Must, say, I think this is awesome. At that time, the robotics work was only in "special projects" class, and consisted of a small robotic arm hooked up to an Amiga. They've certainly come a long way.
:P The teacher mentioned in the article Allen Cameron was most definately my favorite as well. Very cool guy. Congrats!
At the time, the school was part of a "Magnet Program," a program designed to desegregate the schools and attract more of us "white boys" to the school. We had labs of true IBMs and Compaq PCs, and had classes available for learning programming like BASIC, Pascal, and towards the end C. They had a "State of the art" 3com ethernet, that to see any changes on the server you had log out and back in again. They even had a VAX/VMS system. Quite advanced for a High School, probably even by todays standards.
They're responsible for keeping me from having to work some boring regular job. Now I get to listen to users all day!
Actually, yes. April 17th. Don't miss the first one. It has the best crap.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Yes, I know they are illegal immigrants. But, they are still kids with hopes and dreams.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Which subgroup of MIT students compete in such an event? The best and brightest? The dregs? I don't know, I'm just throwing out the possibilty that they are not average or typical MIT students.
It's always fun to beat up smart kids...
Slashdot should just set up an RSS feed from boingboing and rebroadcast it in the Slashdot template.
respek!
Martini Glasses
this picture should be titled return of the mac
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Comment removed based on user account deletion
....reminds me of the US FIRST Robotics Competition .
The engineers did the work, but the kids and the sponsor(s) reap the benefits. This isn't much different but at least it is giving kids a place to go after school, and pushing more people into the engineering field, which is something we may not need.
Often newbies are better than experts. An expert is stuck with the knowledge and experience gathered over time, it is difficult to think outside this box. A newcomer instead can have fresh, unconvential ideas that most experts probably would laugh about but sometimes produce amazing results.
;-)
On the other side, this may just be an excuse for my laziness
Open Source Alternatives
RTFA
Thats teacher Allan Cameron, the other bearded guy is also a teacher Fredi Lajvardi.
RTFA.
If you do, you will see that he was a teacher that started the whole thing, but that the ideas and work came from the team. One of the guys on the team seemed to be very smart.
and bad for Mexico.
Best Slashdot Co
Really sad. Not that some high school kids can build better robots than the MIT. But that they beat the MIT in the 'Technical Report' category is really sad.
I also find it amusing that the MIT would enter a competition that seems to be targeted towards high schools. Or should I find that sad too?
That MIT is the only well-known university in this competition...is it Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or some other MIT?
In retaliation, MIT has constructed a nuclear submarine and blown up Carl Hayden Highschool.
Read it again. They were 3rd after the first round (completing tasks in pool), but other factors (best technical solutions, best technical paper) was also taken into account in deciding the over-all winners.
as we learn more ,we tend to like to complicate things when sometimes a far easier explination or device would suffice. .The simple idea of having onboard power and a lighter tether was a great advantage which threw the game in their favour .
They simplified many of the concepts in the design , to finaly produce a much sleaker robot with a greater performance
The design seems wonderuflly direct and simple , a good example of occam's razor in the eveloution of robots "dont add more than you need
PS:"i apoligise if i missed something TFA is loading at a snails pace for me
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Swean (head of the Navy's Ocean Engineering and Marine Systems program) nodded. He eyed their rudimentary flip chart.
:)
"Why don't you have a PowerPoint display?" he asked.
"PowerPoint is a distraction," Cristian replied. "People use it when they don't know what to say."
"And you know what to say?"
"Yes, sir."
DAMN!!!
Rapid Nirvana
Actually, I believe it to be you who is the idiot. The latest issue of Wired actually contains the hard copy of the article so maybe you should return to your post as Overlord of Dairy Queen.
Of course, you know that the MIT blackjack players LOST money, don't you?
This article from the Washington Post follows-up the story in Wired. In short (and I suppose unsuprisingly), college isn't an option due to their illegal status (no loans, no in-state tuition). Of the two who have graduated high school: One of them is hanging drywall, and the other files papers at a Social Secuirty office.
"A bunch of bright high school kids from Carl Hayden Highschool beat out MIT in a Marine Technology Center's Robotics competition."
That's pretty cool, but not quite as cool as if a bunch of retarded high school kids had beat them instead.
--It's Pimptastic!--
These kids should be sponsored by O.B.!
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Click the link and give some cash. If enough people do that they will get to go to college. Okay Bill pony up some bucks.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
http://www.mpcfaculty.net/jill_zande/Explorer_scor es.pdf
Interesting scores.
The MIT team gets 3rd lowest score on engineering, but the highest score on actually performing the competition tasks.
The illegal immigrants' team gets 2nd highest score on engineering and highest score on technical report.
How does a bunch of spanish speaking illegal immigrants write a better technical report than MIT students?
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Actually, I believe it to be you who is the idiot. The latest issue of Wired actually contains the hard copy of the article so maybe you should return to your post as Overlord of Dairy Queen.
Let me guess- the latest issue is the April edition? And, as we all know, Wired is above pulling April Fool's pranks. But since you bravely posted as Anonymous Coward, I expect that you'd conveniently vanish if I proved you wrong.
So ... a ceasefire somehow leads to more deaths? You, sir, are a fucking moron.
Mind.Forth for Robots is free AI source code that high-schoolers may download, play around with, and possibly get a leg up on outdoing MIT and all the other minds-wide-shut adult AI enterprises. (There is an implicit contest involved here of who can keep the date-stamped robot AI Mind running the longest, as if for the Guiness Book of World Records.)
The Theory of Cognitivity is the basis of the free source code for artificial intelligence. Any high-schooler interested in an AI or robotics career may start working on AI theory immediately.
Dr. Ben Goertzel of the Novamente AI project has evaluated the AI theory offered here.
ACM Sigplan Notices 33(12):25-31 "Mind.Forth: Thoughts on AI and Forth" was a 1998 evaluation by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
ACM Sigplan Notices 39(12):11-16 "Forth and AI Revisited: BRAIN.FORTH" is a more recent (December 2004) follow-up by the ACM on the robot AI project.
Haha, thats why you read the article and not just look at the pictures. The white bearded man is Allan Cameron, and is the computer science teacher there at the high school. I don't understand why people are knocking the students because they had help from Mr. Cameron. Obviously it took alot of dedication from the students to make this project. Besides, who has never been mentored in their life before? Nobody. These kids did a great job.
In the standings here are the breakdowns:
Engineering Eval:
Carl Hayden: 53.17
MIT: 44.67
Tech Report:
Carl Hayden: 20.25
MIT: 17
Team Display:
Carl Hayden: 13.5
MIT: 8
Mission Task:
Carl Hayden: 32
MIT: 48
Total:
Carl Hayden: 118.92
MIT: 117.67
MIT lost because they didn't care enough about their display:)
Apparently they were a little too myopic about the task.
As an engineer myself, it figures:)
Mod parent down. If Rob is getting a divorce, he and his wife seem very nonchalant about it :-)
http://hardware.slashdot.org/~CmdrTaco/journal/
Read his damn journal people. Don't just believe AC rhetoric.
From the Article on Wired:
...he phoned Frank Szwankowski, who sold industrial and scientific thermometers at Omega Engineering in Stamford, Connecticut. Szwankowski knew as much about thermometer applications as anyone in the US...
"You know," he (Frank Szwankowski) said, "I think you can beat those guys from MIT. Because none of them know what I know about thermometers."
I also can't help but think what a loss to their original country they are. America has a way of luring the smartest and most hard working people here with the hopes of a better life. And the country where they came from losses one more leader, one more person who could have had an impact.
It is like the USA is the Yankee's of world baseball. We don't have to grow our own talent. We can buy it elsewhere. And then, what do we give back to other countries? We open HUGE factories where we move jobs, like when GM closed the plants in Michigan and moved them to Mexico because people there would work for pennies on the dollar.
What does this say about how the world is being organized?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Hmm, I guess I, for one, welcome the high school students beating MIT folks in robotics overloads!
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
I don't believe it's offtopic, considering how much attention the article devotes to the topic, to consider for a moment the scale and scope of illegal immigration in the U.S..
If you don't live anywhere near the border, it is probably impossible for you to imagine what has happened over the past two decades in this country. Without any honest debate or policy making, we have entirely, almost formally abdicated the southern border of the United States. Literally millions of "visitors" from other countries now live here. The debate is no longer whether to try to "strengthen the border" but whether or not to give their children driver's licenses and scholarships.
What we have done is create a de-facto second class of U.S. citizen, a "sub citizen" that provides a convenient array of features to business in the southern U.S..
Now the avalanche of "issues:" xenophobia, debates about free trade and freedom of movement, patriotism and racism, classism, corny high-school economic ideologies and horse-and-barn-door-ism. The person writing this article seems to have a clear conclusion, after having spent some time in the midst of the issue: these kids are Americans, and we should treat them like Americans. The thing it makes me think of is that many of our reasoned beliefs (especially those coming from farther up in the chilly north) about what we should do about the "illegal immigration" problem - whether they are principled, right, wrong, or crazy - are often a bit divorced from reality, and most ultimately lead to perpetuation of the status quo: the institutional ghetto, the second-class citizen, and the end of what we love, these days, to lionize as the American Dream.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
I am a US Citizen, severely underemployed, and I cannot afford college either. While I applaud these kids for their efforts, I don't see why illegal aliens can get federal funding to go to college, and I cannot!
Seriously. When I tried to get financial aid, I was awarded $200 in work-study, which doesn't even cover books for half a semester. It is difficult to apply for school, when you can't even pay your rent!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
FTA: "He wasn't used to approaching women, let alone well-dressed white women. He saw apprehension flash across her face. Maybe she thought he was trying to sell magazines or candy bars, but he steeled himself..."
Not quite in "news for nerds"-style...
You sad troll.
Do you think the MIT guys (and every other team) had a little help from their profs. That's help, not that the teacher did the project themselves. Kind of the point in having teachers.
Isn't it just possible these are a smart bunch of guys with a talent for hacking together machines? I say well done, and good luck to them.
This article was in the current print issue of Wired and is a good read. It is unfortunate that they are not able to afford college, MIT or not.
-Slashdot Junky
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Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
Please, please, please mod Mentifex's postings as either Troll or Funny. If people think his stuff is informative, there will be a lot of messed up AI implemented over the next couple of years. This guy is nothing but a troll, and should be treated as such.
Now *this* is informative:
http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html
Great article, go read it, even if you normally don't!!
:-) I think OB together with Hooters (RTA) should give these guys a scholarship.
Why did these kids won? The other teams were probably so nerdy, they didn't even know tampons existed.
The most fascinating (or humilating) thing of this competition is of course that finally they won because their engineering was just on par, but then their technical documentation was superior over all the others. Kudos to their teachers!!
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
Doesn't everyone know that formal education kills imagination?
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
They had to limit the number of people they took with them to 14... they only had one car.
Martha Stewart was beaten in a holiday decoration contest by some other inmates while she was in prison.
What's next? Gary Kasparov beaten at Chess by a NASCAR fan?
Which one of the guys is schtupping the girl?
I for one welcome our spanish speaking illegal immigrant overlords!
The radio talk show hosts usually use the term crimaliens when ever talking about illegal aliens. This story puts a face on those "immigrants who are stealing my white child's spot in state college." Personally, I think that smart people should get the most help to succeed. Think about the loss that our economy/society is suffering by having this young man put up dry wall instead of engineering.
Here. Its a shame it wasn't linked in the main text of the article :-(
There is a link to donate money for these kids to go to college.t ml
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/donate.h
Want to make a difference. Click the link give the amount you spent on that iPod, Xbox, PS2, or any even GTA. If evey one that posted a message gave $200 there would be 20,000 dollars already in the account.
Even if you can not pony up the $200 how about 20?
If you think "somebody" should help these guys be somebody.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Pick lettuce?
My High school fencing team beat Harvard and Yale.
A Call For A New Slashdot Moderation Level!
First a novelty alarm clock. Then a high school ass whooping. What's next??? http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/ 25/0017259&tid=222&tid=137
Three people I know became US citizens (2 Canadians and one from Chile) and received money for college. It wasn't handed to them. They joined the coast guard. They won't be sent to Iraq and they will earn more money than most illegals could. They applied and got US citizenship while serving. They received training while in and got life insurance, health care coverage and the Montgomery G.I Bill. It is not for everyone. But it is a way to move forward. I got my C.S. degree via the Air Force and the G.I. Bill. I was able to take classes and earned most of my credits while in so it only took a couple of semesters after I got out. I wouldn't suggest regular service now unless going to Iraq is something you want to do.
Try RTA before you make stupid comments that only show your own shortcomings.
Well since you're so intent on this:
1 1rvtap35.pdf
http://www.seabotix.com/press/news04/hayden.htm
http://www.unols.org/meetings/2004/200411rvt/2004
http://www.rov.org/pressreleases/july_2004.cfm
http://www.mtronline.net/news_040715.htm
If you would like more, please be assured that I would be more than happy to oblige.
Hey, I _am_ the mentifex guy and I just want my ideas to be given some respect in the marketplace of ideas. How will we ever get anywhere if a mob of anonymous cowards jumps all over people who try to come up with new ideas? Please mod parent up.
There must be some hidden agenda going on here. Whenever mentifex posts, a gang of naysayers tries to squelch him. What would happen to the young Albert Einstein if he were born around 1980 and he tried to say that E = mc^2 for the first time ever on Slashdot?
Whom do you trust more, the ACM or all these anonymous cowards? Show your vote by modding UP or DOWN.
Older geeks from the Phoenix area should remember that Carl Hayden (referred to locally as CHHS) has a long history of 'geek' accomplishments. In the early 90's students from CHHS ran one of the largest free BBS systems in the region. I don't recall how many phone lines they had running at once there, but I do recall them having one of the best Trade Wars 2000 games. CHHS was a popular virtual hangout for computer geeks from throughout the Phoenix metro area. My wife and I (yes, some geeks get married) were both CHHS members and actually met at a weekly GT that was comprised largely of CHHS users.
s .htm
Just like this story suggests the kids at CHHS that made the BBS go did so with limited funds, and little external support. It's ashame to see that little has changed for today's students. Anyone else that remembers the CHHS BBS may want to drop by here: http://www.bbsmates.com/XQ/ASP/id.98859/QX/viewbb
As another poster has mentioned, Carl Hayden used to be a magnet program (I believe they were disbanded 5-7 years ago). All of the technology, programming, networking classes were taught at Carl Hayden. I would've loved to go there but Carl Hayden is probably one of the ghettoest around (and I went to a pretty ghetto one myself ... you know with race riots and gang warfare on school grounds).
/rant
This is a great article because it shows that if you pour money into education, no matter what the background of the students, they will excell. Ofcourse when I graduated highschool in the Phoenix Union HS District (same as Carl Hayden), the statistics were against any HS graduates actually graduating from college. (As far as I understood it, out of the 5-10% that went to college, only 1 in 10 would graduate... this was from a long time teacher in the PUHSD) Sure we got scholarships, but very very few of us were prepared for the amount of reading, writing, and studying required for college. There were plenty of people like me that were competent in our respective fields, but could not handle the rest of the classes (the humanities for me).
As the article mentioned, most of the graduates of this school go on to become day laborers or work in a warehouse, and even if they do go to college, their chances of getting a degree are slim to none. I hope the federal and state governments take a tougher stance on school funding and realisticly look at what is needed to make sure every student has the opportunity to succeede.
Almost all of the PUHSD schools focus on getting the bottom more towards the middle then the middle up towards the top. Which leaves us with a weak middle, which in turn creates a less educated middle class.
Sounds like you wasted 4 (or more likely 5-6) years. If you didn't learn anything you didn't know after high school and you don't use at a job you wasted your time. I use my degrees every day at work.
My take on it exactly. The fact that someone had to provide the 'modern guns, landmines and bombs' to the Maoists, or that the Maoists are to blame for it all to begin with is apparently irrelevant to Mr Rocket Scientist. Nope, someone actually trying to facilitate peace is the REAL guilty party here. Jesus wept.
e=mc^2 is something that can be discussed and seen to be correct by anyone who takes the time to do so.
Your writings are a load of pretentious, self-aggrandising gobble-de-gook. They make no sense, they have no intellectual merit, and quite frankly appear to be the work of a disturbed mind.
You can not seriously compare yourself with Einstein - his work was/is quite clearly beneficial and based on empirical results. You have not been willing to discuss your ideas, you just seem to post them wherever you can find a (tenuous) link. If, like Al, you are willing to discuss your work, start here:
You claim to have "solved" AI. What, in one paragraph, is the problem you have "solved"? Have other subjects, such as mathematics, been "solved"?
Your AI is a random word generator, nothing more, nothing less. While I dislike the fact that I am responding to a troll, I can't let stupidity like this continue unabated.
There is no hidden agenda against you. You are a scurge on the internet, and should be treated as such, you annoying bastard.
My highschool, Milton Academy, already beat MIT in a robotics competition. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5353014 Suck on that!
We have in our power the ability to change these four lives. We have in our hands the chance to lift them up and give them better lives. We have the power to let them know that 15 seconds of fame were not all that they received, that we recognize them, respect them for what they have achieved.
And if we do, one day, when what they achieve with their four extraordinary lives, we might have improved the quality of living for us and for everyone in some way. If we help, we just might have made sure that these minds do not go wasted, do not wither and die, but to let their dreams soar. Imagine the power of $20 to change the world.
Rapid Nirvana
Attention college students, if you read through to the end of the article you'll see that these kids don't have any means to go to college.
One way we can help as a community is to petition the heads of our local Comp Sci/EE departments and see if there's any sort of grant or scholarship they might be willing to give them.
You must admit, this is an exceptional story.
"Scholarships, in the merit-based sense, do not substantially exist at...most top schools." r.r. was just on npr this a.m. stating that most schools have largely abandoned needs-based discounts (aka: scholarships;-) for the express purpose of competing for "star students" to boost their usn&wr ranking...
Something people don't seem to understand it that it was not the choice of the students to become illegal immigrants. It was the choice of their parents, who are the ones at fault. Therefore, it would be unfair to treat the students as illegal immigrants, as they have done nothing wrong
i think majority of the student in MIT are not all that brillant. its just the name MIT that makes them feel intelligent.
"Why, my shark-mounted laser robots would have won this competition if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!"
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Need-blind admissions only applies to US Citizens and permanent residents. Aliens - even legal - are barred from benefiting from federal government funds which are included in the "need-blind" financial aid packages. Some schools reserve a small portion of private funds to award as merit scholarships to international students, but the competition for these scholarships is unreal. You pretty much need to be on your country's international math olympiad team (or something analogous in your field) to even have a chance at a top school like MIT.
On the other hand, considering how smart they are, I'm sure that there are smaller private institutions that will offer thema free ride. It may not be MIT, but if they choose wisely, they can get quality education out of it.
I think I'm going to send this article around the office, and highlight that particular sentence. Genius!
*cleaning out desk in 3...2...1*
At one point in the article a student prays to Mary and wonders what a better patron saint would be for underwater robotics.
I checked here and found that, though there is no patron saint of robotics there is a saint of the Internet, computers and computer technicians (Isidore of Seville)
A good saint for them to pray to next time (or maybe MIT can pray to) would be Erasmus who is listed as the saint for watermen, sailors, mariners and seasickness.
I think the kids won because they trashed PowerPoint. Think the NASA guys read /.?
They look like the cast from Lean on Me.
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Why, oh why, could I not think like these kids in high school? Now I'm stuck writing VB code and reading slashdot. Such a waste.
An image from television flashed through Lorenzo's mind. "Absorbent?" he asked. "Like a tampon?"
Maybe MIT has Special Ed. classes too?
" It is unfortunate that they are not able to afford college, MIT or not."
You mean the high school kids or the Wired authors?
As undocumented immigrants they are ineligible for state and federal government grants/scholarships. MIT is a private school. They can offer them anything they want.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
And came away with the same feeling I had when I read the headline. That is, that it's a great feelgood story, but they didn't really "beat" MIT. They were handed the competition because they scored better in the subjective parts. I KNOW part of that was because they were underprivileged kids who weren't expected to do anything. They essentially rose so far above expectations that they were given the competition as a result.
But it's still a great story.
As an aside, shouldn't someone with some money to throw around help these kids pay for college? As illegals, they aren't eligible for financial aid (nor should they be, but wouldn't this be a great situtation for someone like Mark Cuban?
Hey this story JUST reminded me of what happened in Garfield HS about 20 years ago... Jaime Escalante, latino professor in LA, went to a high school filled with losers (the worst of the worst), and decided to teach the kids calculus.
His method was revolutionary - their students ended up applying for scholarship, and their grades were so high that they raised suspicions of cheating (racism, anyone?)
So they applied for the test again, and succeeded.
The rest, is history.
-----
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Great, so we have a bunch of illegal immigrants, meaning neither they nor their parents pay taxes, attending a state-run high school, competing in a government-funded contest. Can we please spend a little more money on people who don't contribute anything here? :P
Getting a bachelor or master at MIT is the same as getting one just about anywhere else. MIT used to be a great place for technology students to study, but they backed off on the quality of their undergraduate programs and now you basically only go there if you are a doctoral student.
Why do people posts as Anonymous Coward when they want to talk shit? I guess they have nothing to lose.
2 can play at that game, AC.
l0ameness f1odder la2meness fo3dder lam4eness fod4der lame5ness fodd5er lamene6ss fodd6er lamene7ss fodde7r lamenes8s fodd9er lameness9
I lost interest at that bit where it started talking about what a mess the rain makes of West Phoenix. It's completely irrelevant and is the kind of filler people write to dilute stories with technical subject matter to make them more palatable to the masses who, let's face it, want to patronisingly talk about how smart these Mexican kids are without actually bothering to find out what they did. Someone point me to an article that tells me what they actually did and how they did it.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
What we have here is an obvious piece of advocacy journalism:
- Over four pages of coverage of an extrordinary accomplishment by four extraordiarily talented and hard-working undocumented immigrant children.
- Most of the fifth page lamenting their financial handicap and plugging a particular federal bill to give MILLIONS of illegal-immigrant children a place at the federal tit and an entitlement to further boost the drain on the taxpayers pocketbooks - with a hefty chunk of the cashflow siphoned off to pay for more beaucrats.
- A copule sentences on how such a program would rip college opportunities out of the hands of other children who are citizens - whose parents are already being taxed - sometimes into poverty - to pay for the institutions and scholarships that would be transferred to the illegals.
Yes it stinks for the kids who built the 'bot - and others like them. But how many similar stories DIDN'T get told about rural-poor US citizen kids who performed similar feats, with similar lack of resources?
It's NOT rare. For starters, if you hang out at NASA for any length of time you'll notice that a LOT of "rocket scientists" are from such backgrounds. Many have such stories to tell. (And in NASA's heyday the educational opporiunities for a kid who was rural, southern, or (horrors!) both were comparable to those of these kids.)
Creating a new entitlement program will redistribute the resources differently but not increase them overall. Further, with the mismanagement and overhead typical of government programs, it's likely to destroy far more opportunities than it creates.
Children who are US citizens are already at a signficant disadvantage to immigrants and student-visa holders. The latter tend to get financial aid as grants - even if they are children of the rich - while the former are left with mostly loans which must be paid off at interest or suplemented by low-paid jobs that take time from study. Tuition has become so astronomical that in many fields the citizens are just dropping out, as the lifetime benefit of the education is exceeded by its unsubsidized cost.
Are we to believe that these four are typical, rather than extrordinary? (There are extrordinary individuals in all large populations.) Are we to believe the children of illegal immigrants are so much MORE competent than the children of citizens that more good than harm will come from from transferring educational opportunites from the latter to the former, dropping a bunch of them through the cracks on the way?
In order to press for a government solution, the story carefully ignores (except to belittle in passing) private sector aid. There are an enormous number of private scholarship programs and private charatable foundations with scholarship programs, with an explosion of criteria for who they will help. (The tax system makes it profitable to create them, and has for decades. And people whos story is like that of these kids who finally make it often create leg-up funds for others like themselves.) They're not well known. But for kids with track records like these there are likely to be hundreds of them that might fund them through school.
IMHO the real tragedy here is that the educational institution (with the gleeful aid of the media) did NOT help these kids dig up private funding. Instead it left them in low-paying jobs and is using their plight to push for legislation to feather its own nest.
Meanwhile, the MIT administration really ought to be busting their butts to dig up scholarship money for these kids. (Especially if they remember what the Model Railroad Club wrought.) Four children of migrant workers who, while still in highschool, beat their team with $800 to buy balloons, tampons, and PVC pipe should be the star recruits for their next freshman class.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I just can't resist this opportunity to say how much I prefer the colleges in my country (Finland) when it comes to money matters. Essentially, universities in Finland are free of tuitions, leaving only the cost of books (which can be bought used or sometimes even found in the library, if you can't afford new ones.) Of course this is one of the reasons why we pay more taxes over here, but since they all go to things like free healthcare and education, I don't really mind. It's like every citizen in Finland was donating a little to help people like those guys get into school (among other things).
:))
:-/
Long story short, the Finnish system gives a chance to everyone who's smart enough to pass the entrance exam. (Oh, and just because our schools are free doesn't mean that they're crap
PS: Just one drawback to my glorious portrayal of my country: if you are an unregistered immigrant you would probably be on a plane back home if you attracted attention like that
Read my blog: HansMast.com
I for one welcome our new hormone-overloaded overlords
As salaries go up, so would prices, and relative earning power would be unchanged. If grape-pickers make $14 per hour, but a bunch of grapes costs $20, how has the problem been solved?
In a capitalist economy there will always exist a large number of jobs at the bottom of the economic spectrum. Most Americans with college or graduate degrees who do not have jobs, do not consider such bottom jobs when considering employment. Instead they live off of unemployment, savings, and credit as they search for a job "in their field."
BTW, unemployment is historically low right now. There does not exist enough unemployed Americans, at any economic class, to fill all the job openings that would develop if we were able to somehow expel all illegal immigrants.
As the cost of an MIT degree continues to spiral above inflation, does MIT continue to attract students that have the "Manus" part?
The article says:
I would argue that Lorenzo's hands-on experience was a key factor in his team's success.
I wonder how many of MIT's students arrive as freshman with hands-on skills? I would guess that this number has been declining over the years.
When I was a freshman at MIT, I remember fixing an old stereo on my desk. One of my eletrical engineering classmates, an absolute math genius, who had already aced the intro eletrical engineering class, asked, "Hey, what are those little things with stripes on them that you've got there?" I said, "You're kidding, right? Those are resistors, you know, "R" in all the problems you've been doing." "Oh", he said, "I'd never seen a real one before."
Mens ET Manus -- Gotta have both to be a world-class engineer. Congratulations to the "La Vida Robot" team for having what it takes!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Back when I did FIRST (formerly US FIRST) in high school, the team that MIT sponsored was consistently among the worst. There was a team in the next town over from me that was only sponsored by Key Bank that was always much better and with far less apparent technical expertise.
po'
Come on, man! If you can't afford the o and the r, why are you splurging on an apostrophe?
Think of the children!
Karnal
This is a great article; it brought tears to my eyes... until I got to the political message and plea for money at the end.
Then I went back and reviewed it again only to realize that the teachers were the "magnets" not the students. Did the teachers really build this robot and the students get the credit?
Think about it. These students had no experience in robotics before, but after a short time they're experts. Then after graduation they are working manual labor jobs. Not a programmer among them?
Something stinks with this article and it starts with all the political crap at the end of it.
It does address an interesting issue though. If these students are as smart as alleged in the article they certainly should be allowed to go to college. But I smell a rat... that this article was politically motivated. The story was modified to fit the political message.
It's clear that these two teachers beat the MIT students. The teachers should be given scholarships to MIT.
John D.
Texas
Ha!
Sincerely,
Caltech
It seems one of the biggest problem is money, for both legal citizens and illegal immigrants to the good old US of A. Money is needed to build programs to help illegal immigrants to become legal citizens, and to provide american kids (legal or otherwise) with a higher education.
Problem is, the american government priority is to invade other countries and spending millions of tax dollars while doing so, while american people struggle to get a proper education.
"What state do you live in? In most states, if you spend two years at an ALMOST FREE Community College, you are granted automatic admission into a 4yr school." I graduated from Quad-C in Plano (Collin County Community College) with a 3.8 and got no offers for admission to any school, whatsoever. Neither did my father, who did community college when he was 39 years old. But maybe Quad-C was a different thing altogether? Doubt it, though.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
but so is this article - if you're going to report on geek news, something which Slashdot has done well in the past, then you need to report on it _early_ - as in, go to the contest, report that Carl Hayden won over MIT, when it happened. It's not "news" to get this _after_ the Wired magazine is already out in the mail.
Where does the article mention that they were handed the competition because of where they came from?
They won because they did a better job.
But coming from poverty made their victory all the more sweeter. We cheered even harder when SpaceshipOne with limited resources beat Nasa with seemingly endless resources in coming up with a viable option for space travel that is cheaper.
Rapid Nirvana
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"You're very comfortable with the metric system," Swean observed.
"I grew up in Mexico, sir," Oscar said.
Swean nodded. He eyed their rudimentary flip chart.
"Why don't you have a PowerPoint display?" he asked.
"PowerPoint is a distraction," Cristian replied. "People use it when they don't know what to say."
"And you know what to say?"
"Yes, sir."
These guys would be a huge asset in any good college because they have more desire to learn this stuff than many students I've seen combined together. I seriously doubt they'd waste their time playing CounterStrike if given the chance at a good Engineering school. Maybe I'll mention their names to my school.
Very interesting story...
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
I hope these kids can milk whatever studio comes to them for movie rights on this.
I am an H1-B worker, and I pay a lot taxes/money for social security etc which I am never goin to realize (unless I want and get a green card - which I do not).
So, I definitely do not mind letting my money (and not the US citizens' money) go to these kids who have shown potential and are in dire need - if the US citizens are more willing to fund War then education.
Yeah.
And people thought it was silly to have that high school team in on the DARPA Grand Challenge.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
If people actually educated themselves about these things they'd have no venomous indignation left to fuel their ignorant, bigoted cliches.
I'm sure that they likely don't pay federal income tax, but then, many citizens in their tax bracket get more back than they pay in, due to tax credits and such.
tax credits don't mean the goverment pays you money. you just get to subract that amount from the taxes you would otherwise have to pay. at best, you don't pay any taxes.
Chances are, they pay more taxes than citizens of equal means, without getting nearly as many benefits.
<sarcasm> yes, given that they earn money in the lowest tax bracket, they definitely spend enough money on purchases to make up for in in sales tax. they pay even more in sales tax than americans earning similar amounts, in spite of not having to pay federal or state income taxes. </sarcasm>
i'm not sure what is worse: your lack of any insight, or slashdot's rating of the post as insightful.
I see the results in the people I deal with in industry. As a generalisation, most of the PhDs I deal with are less productive than their non-PhD collegues because they approach problems as academic problems instead of practical problems. As a result, a lot of effort gets spent investigating stuff that does not matter in the real world, or making impractical assumptions.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
These kids are not "nerds" by any normal definition. They certainly were not inticed to attend Carl Hayden by its computer program. These kids are "undocumented" immigrants from Mexico. At least one of them was a former gang member.
These kids, with an $800 dollar robot and some creativity, beat out MIT's $11,000 dollar entry. The submission summary doesn't do any justice to the actual accomplishment here.
i'm the jedidiahmarkfoster your parents warned you about
You might want to re-check your brain.
There might be un-used aid money, but qualifying for it is a WHOLE 'NOTHER MATTER!
You would need to move out of Mom and Dad's house for at least a year, have income of less than $20,000 and PROVE it to get financial aid. And then, most likely, it will NOT be grant money, it'll be loans. And the loans will typically stay aroudn $4000 per year. Try and go to school on that. I worked almost full time, made enough to keep an apartment, eat, and drive a $500 car, and I got NOTHING in grant money. Low interest loans is what they give you. And if you think that's enough to get you through school, think again. If you live in your parents' house, they use your parents' income to do the financial aid calculation, and they look at the value of your parents' home and vehicles. If you think you're getting aid while living at home, think again. It's not happening. Your parents are expected to mortgage their home to put you through college. Financial aid (grants) is given to the extremely needy (disabled, minorities, financially destitute, large families with single parents and small incomes, etc.) And there's nothing that Google is going to do to change that.
This is just like Bring It On, just not as pretty.
"MIT's ROV motored smoothly down and quickly located the 5-gallon drum inside the plastic submarine mock-up at the bottom of the pool. But as the robot approached the container, its protruding mechanical arm hit a piece of the submarine frame, blocking it from going farther. They tried a different angle but still couldn't reach the drum. The bot wasn't small enough to slip past the gap in the frame, making their pump system useless. There was nothing they could do - they had to move on to the next assignment."
Thats BAD engineering.
AND
"Engineering Eval:
Carl Hayden: 53.17
MIT: 44.67"
That over 8 points right there.
Don't use that "We lost for subjective reasons " crap here, bucko.
Sounds to me they probably got so much money(11,000), they got carried away with features.
As an engineer, I would say thats a typipical Jr. Engineer mistake.
Of course, that's speculation on my part.
It owuld be truly interesting if the teams wrote a 'lessons learned' paper. I would love to see what the MIT team thinks of their design and the contest in hind-sight.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Fuck, if we could harness the energy some people use into explaining why they CANT make it, we could fly to fuckin' MARS.
I think the one thing everyone tends to overlook when the topic is regarding immigration is the fact that America was built on immigrants. Mexicans are some of the hardest working people i've ever met, and will go through anything for their family. More power to them for the fact that a group of kids with supposedly no future did this. Its unfortunate so many americans are raised to be lazy.
This is a great day for minorities!
If the California government actually followed through with the policy they publicize then our economy would collaspe instantly. They are 100% percent aware of this.
The thing is, if they change the policy to reflect their real intentions they would all be voted out of office.
Our government knows immigration is a good thing but the avg voter (I'm talking both sides of the aisle here) is retarded so the government has to be two faced about it.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Ahhh, the good old days when I got to help whoop up on the navy.
m
http://www.mpcfaculty.net/jill_zande/Team_MATE.ht
They just can't get state/federal funding, and the have to pay the out of state cost.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They wouldn't have to pay out-of-state tuition in Mexico.
Doesn't Mexico have any colleges?
America has a way of luring the smartest and most hard working people here with the hopes of a better life. And the country where they came from losses one more leader, one more person who could have had an impact.
That's because the US is the country where they can maximize their potential. They might have helped their own home countries a bit if they stayed but they can help their homeland a lot more by maximizing their own opportunities and then helping out after they've achieved something. That's exactly what's wrong with buying talent analogy - only a little of it is bought. The US expends a lot of resources developing a lot of the raw talent that comes here.
I'm an immigrant and part of an extended family of immigrants (38 in the US and 28 in Canada). We send more money back to Vietnam per year than all of our relatives (in the hundreds) in Vietnam have made in their entire time in Vietnam (and we all worked hard for what we've achieved). I sorta have a problem with people telling me how I should've lived my life. If you're really concerned with helping unfortunate countries develop, you can always volunteer with the Peace Corps, donate money yourself or even move there.
And then, what do we give back to other countries? We open HUGE factories where we move jobs, like when GM closed the plants in Michigan and moved them to Mexico because people there would work for pennies on the dollar.
Poverty has declined the most in the countries that have integrated the most into the global economy. http://papers.nber.org/papers/w8933 (National Bureau of Economic Research). So it seems the US is 'giving' quite a bit back. Unless you're trying to say that poor people in foreign countries don't want jobs. My relatives in the Nike factories are better off than they were before. They don't have the same standard of living as we do in the US but then it's an entirely different situation.
What does this say about how the world is being organized?
It's getting more efficient and we're making progress.
Aquadorks, Teen force!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I can see the magnetic bumper sticker now:
My ex-gang member high-school electronics whiz can beat your MIT graduate student in Battle Bots!
It's not funny, it's racist and prejudiced!
also can't help but think what a loss to their original country they are. America has a way of luring the smartest and most hard working people here with the hopes of a better life.
:-) I laugh because I sincerely believe white America is severly prejudiced to this day and suffers from superiority complex (that allows you to invade "brown-skinned" country, like Iraq, and be proud of it).
This is what makes the US of A great, the influx of people. This is something racist rednecks and other uniformed American masses fail to understand. There are particular set of historical conditions that were "just right."
USA's superiority began after World War II. This is a country that reaped great benefit from that conflict, in two ways: by developing industries, boosted by the war effort in another continent, accumulating capital like no other country; and by receiving the influx of immigrants. All those scientists and mathematicians from abroad landed at Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, etc. And the cheap labor. These things were a great boon.
A fact often overlooked by racists is that non-whites are smart, too.
No, he probably meant he didn't want them going to college on his tax dollars because he's probably one of those people who refers to hispanics/latinos as "wetbacks".
Very well said! Every PhD person I ever worked with just deal with things in such a round-about unconventional way, it's no coincidence. Great for research labs, lousy for the every day office environment.
Give me your tired, your sick, your poor.
This was what America was founded on. What went wrong?
Parent post shows the results of both projects, but neglects the
Haven't read the article, but I'm sure some friendly slashdotter will find out how much both projects costed.
Hey! As an amateur robot builder myself I'd love to see some details of what you did. Any chance that you'll be putting together a web site with pictures and maybe writing up a little about what you had to do to make your robot work?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
My son Ian's going to be on their team and they can just surf the UW auctions for spare parts.
Hey, if we can't win the Apple Cup, at least we can win in BattleBot!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Not to take anything away from the high school kids but I think we need to keep in mind that the MIT students have to deal with an MIT workload while digging up the time to do this on the side. The high school kids on the other hand have an essentially INFINITE amount of time to dedicate to the project. (seriously... think about how much time the average high school guy has if you subtract the time they spend masturbating and playing xbox and counterstrike)
Looks like the point was trying to bring up is being discussed under this comment
"Could you help me buy the most best tampons?"
Keep in mind this is coming from Lorenzo, toughest looking guy in the team. (second from the left in the team photo)
> You claim to have "solved" AI. What, in one paragraph,
> is the problem you have "solved"? Have other subjects,
> such as mathematics, been "solved"?
The Decision-Tree of Mind-Design shows what Mentifex has solved -- how to integrate sensory input with the conceptual mindgrid.
AI is a large, to-be-solved monolithic problem; mathematics is not.
"Anonymous cowards" who attack new ideas without bothering to read and understand them are intellectually dishonest. If people want to refute the Mentifex AI proposal, let them counter it with ideas and logic, not with flaming and name-calling.
Perhaps I'm just the exception. I studied something very un-technical, upon which I've built my career -- while my stated major was international relations, a large part of that was languages, and I now work as a Japanese-to-English translator.
But then, I knew roughly what I wanted to do before I even got to university. I think that might be key here. If you don't know where it is in life you want to go, it's perfectly natural that you won't get much of anywhere. A good number of my friends from university didn't have a rat's arse of an idea about what to do with their lives, and university provided an excellent means for them to explore different options and try to figure out their futures. And in that, at least, I think their time spent in uni is a good thing.
It sounds like the four kids in the article already have a pretty good idea of what they want to do, thanks to a couple teachers taking them seriously, and as such they will no doubt get a lot of useful learning out of university -- the trouble for them lies in the financial and legal barriers between them and higher education. Anyone who cares about education would do well to find out how they can help, either by donating any extra cash, or by getting in touch with their own local schools to see what assistance they might provide. Pass along what you've got, because you can't take it with you when you go.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Precisely.
The biggest part of the problem with jobs and degrees is knowing what you really want to do. If you've got a fire in your belly to do X, chances are, you'll find a way to do it. If you kinda sorta maybe like X, and a job doing Y pays better and is easier to get, you'll probably wind up doing Y.
Me, I knew I wanted to build a career using my language skills. I studied Japanese, German, and Spanish in high school, continuing my studies in university and adding a smidgen of Chinese for variety :). Since I knew what I wanted, I found a way to make it work, and I am now gainfully employed as a Japanese-to-English translator.
Once you know what you want, what you really want, then it's simply a matter of making that real. If you have no clue what you want in life, you have no real path, no real direction, and as such it should not be surprising if you go through life adrift on the seas of social whim.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Reminds me of an old proverb in Chinese.
All I can say is, damn straight. It may not be an easy row to hoe, but it's there for the hoeing. Set to it or get out of the field.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
So what's stopping you from hanging sheetrock or filing papers? Oh, I guess that'd be your pride. Well, at least your username is accurate -- urusai can mean stfu in Japanese.
Well of course ((Academics != education) != (real world effectiveness)) is true!!!! Everyone knows that (Academics != education) is 1 and (real world effectiveness) > 1.
:)
Stop abusing C SYNTAX!!! From your friendly syntax nazi.
It takes two to tango, and lord knows the US doesn't make the most graceful of dancing partners...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
A quick google search shows a number of possibilities. Reading through a couple makes me very sad that people are so scared. The most relevant link would seem to be down, but the google cache still has a copy.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
The sad fact is that most of the Boomer generation folk currently running the show didn't really have to work that hard to get where they are, and have become dull and complacent as a result. They then try to keep down the ones that do have to work their asses off, the ones that are harder, stronger, sharper, and smarter for having to really use their talents on a regular basis just to survive.
It's these folk, the underdogs, that form the foundation of much of the American myth of identity, and yet it's these same salt-of-the-earth types that are denied at every opportunity.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Try going to any school in this state cheap.... it doesn't happen! Try to get any funding from the state... good luck!
This is not about money, it is about the opportunity.
5 7?1111344266<l=1111344286 l ert_id=977777
People say "let them legalize". Believe it or not, it's not an option for most of these kids. Have you ever thought about how hard it is for these kids to legalize in this country being illegal aliens? Well for most it's impossible.
Why? Because the Dream Act doesn't exist and there is simply no other way for some.
They were brought here by their parents. Studied... graduated. Now what? People say "let them go back". Go back where? They GREW UP HERE!! This country IS their home. Go back and risk never coming back to their HOME country?
People call them "criminals". Really? What is their crime? Being forcefully brought here to live a life of manual labor never to realize their full potential? Does that ring a bell in our history? How is that a crime? Their parents are criminals, but calling these kids criminals is plain stupid. Let's consider this situation. A couple of people have a baby; 1 to 15 years later they illegally enter the US and remain here. The kid is now a criminal for the rest of his/her life? Some people speak of these kids with disgust, even hatred. Why?! They haven't done anything.
Maybe people are afraid of loosing their tax dollars? You think these kids want the money? They pray for the opportunity to become citizens of the country they consider home. They pray for a chance to exercise their full potential. In fact if you told them pay full tuition, maintain a high GPA and then you will have a chance at citizenship, they would accept that with gratitude.
Maybe people are afraid of loosing their jobs? In what country, in what part of history, did more educated people result in loss of jobs? This is absurd. America is the most powerful economy in the world because of competition. This country's education is getting worse. (This is a fact, if you want proof I'll be happy to provide) Why? Not enough competition. Some people would say I'm stupid for saying this. I say, it is incredibly easy to get into college in this country. I cannot emphasize this enough. I know people who finished high school with a 60 average, they attend a community and city colleges not paying a cent. On the other hand, I know people who excelled in every subject and now they work illegally for $4 an hour sometimes 20 hours a day. Lack of Dream Act forces these kids to work illegally once they realize that there is no opportunity for them in their own country (Which IS the US do not forget!). Although they feel horrible for breaking the law and working illegally, there is simply no other way for them. Would you starve to obey the law?
These kids are undocumented Americans not criminals. There is a reason why the Dream Act includes the 5 year minimum residency and a maximum age of 16 at entry. The Dream Act is just the right thining to do. I urge everyone to sacrifice a minute of your time and support the Dream.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/4918608
http://www.unionvoice.org/alert-description.tcl?a
First off I commend them on their intelligence and striving to succeed in a racist and stereotypical society. It's an amazing story to read about! I am a bit perturbed; however, that we are sitting here writing articles about how wonderful these illegal immigrants are! They are consuming our tax dollars for medical care and education whilst occupying job slots. There are far to many intelligent, hard working people all over the world crying for their chance to get into this country LEGALLY!!! There is a reason that California's taxes, vehicle registration, and vehicle insurance are ridiculously high! The root of the evil falls on our heads as US Citizens! We did it to ourselves by being greedy. First off most of us don't want to pick strawberries for a living, or be a gardener. Secondly, most of us don't want to pay $10 for a bag of American (obviously including legal immigrants) picked oranges when a $3 bag of Mexican picked oranges is sitting beside it. The most blatant case of this economic tragedy would be Walmart who sends the majority share of their business to Asia in order to maintain "Everyday Low Prices"... again it's our fault for shopping there. All in all putting our foot down on illegal immigration, and spending our income on domestic products would greatly help our economy and everyone who resides here legally!!!!!!!! My $.02