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Robots To Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers
Vicissidude sends us to Wired for a look at a fruit-harvesting robot being developed in California. Its development has been funded entirely by agricultural associations, concerned by the uncertainty surrounding migrant immigrant labor. Quoting: "As if the debate over immigration and guest worker programs wasn't complicated enough, now a couple of robots are rolling into the middle of it. Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labor-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season."
America is a rich country with a free and good education system so every non retarded person is qualified for skilled labor. Farming is inherently low value added unskilled labor best suited to developing nations. Why does America even have farms? The land would be better used as nature reserves , recreational parks and new subdivisions for people to live in so that they wouldnt need to live as crowded as in New York and San Francisco. Food can be imported much cheaper and our taxes could be reduced a lot as the government wouldnt have to subsidize farming or research into farming machines. This is just another example of large farming lobbies using their lobbying power to make the rest of the population pay for an outmoded way of life. And to anybody who crys wolf about food security I say get serious - do you really think any third world country will try to hold back food from a country with the strongest military in the world as well as one which controls the world economy through its control of the dollar?
**Life is too short to be serious**
Actually, 90% of Bostonians are Americans, not Irish. They didn't just step off the boat, they were born there. Granted, born of parents of Irish descent, maybe, but that does not make them immigrants. It makes them Americans.
Saying "we are a nation of immigrants" is a rhetorical dodge. We are a nation of largely native-born Americans. Second generation Americans are not immigrants.
More important is the attitude which immigrants display. Are you coming here to be Americans? Or are you coming here to take advantage of the American way of life? Then great--welcome. If you're coming here merely to lay claim to American benefits, but still want to be considered a different nationality--and most importantly, if you teach your children the same thing--then you're not welcome. No nation is obligated to accommodate a persistent disaffected sub-class of citizens.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Actually, it is a nation of immigrants. You don't get to divide immigrants up into before- and after- lines.
Sure you do. Before there was a 'nation' to immigrate to, the people settling the land were not immigrants. There weren't many, if any, immigrants to the United States before about 1830. Your family is a family of immigrants, it seems.