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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."
A "secure" border is a pipe dream. Securing any physical perimeter of significant size is an enormously difficult and expensive proposition. It's a little easier if you can use deadly force, but it's still hard. Take a good look at the perimeter of a secure military installation, and then note that it wouldn't actually keep anyone out without the extensive patrols, the alert response team, etc.
Now try to scale that up to nearly 10,000 miles of borders (need to include the coasts, you know) and it becomes completely impossible.
Not only is it not possible to secure such a perimeter, there's no point because perimeter security is useless. All good security is defense in depth. In the case of the military installation, that means the perimeter security is only intended to slow attackers down and, maybe, catch some of them. All sensitive areas inside the perimeter have their own security infrastructure, and all personnel inside the perimeter are subject to frequent random identity checks, by security personnel and one another.
We could "secure our borders" if we were willing to implement such a defense in depth. That means, basically, internal checkpoints all over the country. No more travel without presenting identification, at a minimum, which would require massive increases in police forces, plus travel databases and other support infrastructure. It would probably also require all sorts of commercial organizations to take on a law enforcement role, required by law to validate identity and proof of citizenship and to deny services to and report anyone unable to provide the necessary documentation.
Were we to take those steps, we could achieve the secure "border" that you'd like to see. Without them, it doesn't matter how much we spend on fences, border patrol guards, or even minefields, we won't even put a dent in illegal immigration.
Personally, I don't see what's so attractive about a secure border anyway. Why do you care? Terrorism isn't a good answer because (a) you can't stop terrorists from coming in and (b) foreign terrorist attacks are too infrequent and low-impact to be worth the enormous cost even if you could stop them. So what's the point?
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