US Virtual Border Fence Doesn't Work

lelitsch writes "The Washington Post reports that the initial pilot of the Virtual Border Fence planned by the DHS and subcontracted to Boeing has been a miserable failure. A lot of the points in the report have the hallmark of death-march software development projects. Some choice quotes include 'did not work as planned or meet the needs of the U.S. Border Patrol,' 'DHS officials do not yet know the type of terrain where the fencing is to be constructed,' and 'the design will not be used as the basis for future... development.' The article notes that Boeing was forced to deliver 'something' early as President Bush pushed for immigration reform in Congress in 2006. That reform effort died last year in the Senate."

Comments

Stupid.

[SatanicPuppy]

When the hell has building a giant wall ever helped anything? Jesus...At least they could have outsourced the work to China...Their wall didn't work, but at least it got finished.

But, I suppose anything is better than coming up with a sensible immigration policy. Gotta keep those high-paying fruit picking, chicken boning, and christmas tree cutting jobs local.

Re:Stupid.

[Detritus]

One reason all those crap jobs have such lousy wages is that employers know they can always hire illegals, who are in no position to complain about wages or working conditions. I'd rather pay more and see an American citizen get the job.

Re:Stupid.

[Lumpy]

you're right. the one in China was 100% ineffective and did not do anything.

Damn Chinese they kept building it for decades upon decades all in a feeble attempt. Everyone knows that the Great Wall of china was a complete failure.

sarcasm aside it CAN work and BE effective if it was not half-assed. Therein lies the problem. The idiots in Washington get all puffy and hem and haw all over the issue while in reality they secretly don't care and want to allow the illegal immigrants in the country. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that every single one of those congress critters has an illegal wither cleaning their house, pool or keeping up the yard. They dont want to stop the flow of very cheap labor coming into the US.

Re:Stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather pay more and see an American citizen get the job.

No, you wouldn't.
Ideology is easy when it doesn't hurt you (or, in this case, your pocket).

Re:Stupid.

[SatanicPuppy]

Actually, the reason is that you put someone through 12 years of school, and he doesn't want to work in a chicken processing plant anymore.

Like it or not, we don't have the workforce to fill out those sorts of jobs anymore, and frankly it doesn't make any economic sense to force a decently educated worker into a job that could be filled for much less cost by someone who has no education at all. If nothing else, there is a huge opportunity cost for our economy when you force a worker that is capable of working some kind of high automation line job, into the kind of crap work that was common 100 years ago...It makes far more sense to send the work to another country in that case.

It always annoys me when people like you think that, if only we paid the fruit pickers more and threw out all the migrant workers, then our economy would somehow boom. The only thing that would boom is the cost of the fruit, and that makes everyone who buys it poorer, it makes fruit from other countries more competitive in the marketplace, and that drives domestic fruit producers out of business. What a great plan.

Just Business

[BarC0d3z]

Forcing someone to deliver a proof-of-concept or sample product for an arbitrary date is just common business practice. In this case, if Boeing wanted to continue the contract with the US Government they needed to prove they were up to the challenge. The arbitrary date was set by Bush because of his agenda. Just last week our company had to build a demo sandbox for a potential customer to play around in. We had a restrictive timeline in which to build it because the customer sponsor had a deadline to receive funding. We had to deliver something mostly untested and with deprecated hardware. The only difference is we had done it before so was able to deliver quickly. In my mind it's just finger-pointing if a vendor agrees to a certain date and then can't deliver. Just like our company should be willing to accept the consequences if our potential customer comes back with complaints that the system we gave them is too slow or buggy and "doesn't work."

Re:forced to deliver early, for political reasons

[ScentCone]

And the Bush administration once again puts politics above effective governance and management.

And a slashdot user once again trots out their favorite villain without actually using their damn head.

So, you're saying that Boeing told DHS that this would not work in its first prototype/deployment? They were under orders to deploy something they knew would not work? Or is it possible that the procurement people said, "We need something that can do X, can you provide that on this timetable?" And the vendor said they could, and that it would work. Is your position that the president looked over their proposal, saw the technical flaws and systems integrations problems with the laptops and software, and said, "no one will notice, do it anyway," or that perhaps it's not the executive branch's leadership job to know when a vendor is lying about the compatibility of the components they're stitching together? Why aren't you complaining about Boeing, for lying about their ability to actually do this, and agreeing to take the contract?

Re:You joke, but...

[grassy_knoll]

You beat me too it.

From the all knowing wikipedia

Remittances, or contributions sent by Mexicans living abroad, mostly in the United States, to their families at home in Mexico, are a substantial and growing part of the Mexican economy; they comprised $18 billion in 2005.[52] In 2004, they became the second largest source of foreign income after crude oil exports, roughly equivalent to foreign direct investment (FDI) and larger than tourism expenditures; and represented 2.5 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product.[53] The growth of remittances has been remarkable: they have more than doubled since 1997. Recorded remittance transactions exceeded 41 million in 2003, of which 86 percent were made by electronic transfer.[40]

[ tinfoil ]
Why, it's almost as if illegal immigration from Mexico is overlooked by the US Government as a method of foreign aid to Mexico. US corporations get cheap disposable labor ( if the workers complain they get deported ), Mexico gets an infusion of cash to prop up their government.
[ /tinfoil ]

Re:Stop them.. why would we stop them?

[nicklott]

Name me one society in history that has valued physically demanding jobs over sedentary work... Through most of history societies have used slavery or other forms of compulsion to make other people do the hard physical work they didn't want to.

I don't think recent illegal immigration is messing with wage levels here, this is the other edge of the double edged sword of free-market capitalism: If strawberry-picker wages rise then the price of strawberries will rise too. But then wal-mart won't sell as many strawberries, so they'll go and buy them from producers in other, cheaper, countries, eg mexico. This will drive the growers out of business, losing the Fed a whole bunch of taxes and earning them a barracking in congress. To keep the US growers in business then the government either looks the other way while the growers use illegal immigrants to get their cheap labour (the only way to keep it cheap enough is for the employees not to have any benefits, hence illegal immmigrants) or pays them a subsidy to keep the prices down. Obviously they're going to plump for the cheaper option where possible.

You can replace strawberry picking above with pretty much any industry in the country, be it animal, vegetable or mineral.

For example Fruit/veg picking is largely manual labour that can't cut its costs by mechanising, it relies on on low labour costs so the government looks the other way. Cotton growing is now largely mechanised and wouldn't benefit much from cheaper labour so instead they get huge subsidies to keep the price competitive.

This is also of course why the US is increasingly on the wrong side of the WTO. Free markets are great while you can sell your stuff cheaper than everyone else, but when they undercut you, it doesn't look so rosy; He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.

Re:forced to deliver early, for political reasons

[Attila Dimedici]

I'd say both sides knew it would never work the way it was intended, but it doesn't really matter. They only have less than a year left anyways. This is another project like Reagan's favorite pet project the STAR WARS DEFENSE INITIATIVE. Good thing we spent shitpiles of money on that. I feel safe knowing that we can knock down all those pesky Soviet missiles. And yes, the Bush administration was responding to what the public wanted - not by coming up with an effective solution, but doing the "feel good" solution that sounds great on paper, but never quite works out in reality. I mean, what company is not going to take a billion dollar contract from the government, even if they think it isn't exactly feasible? They will just end up asking for more money in the end. You do know that SDI is where the technology they just used to shoot a broken satellite down came from? You do know that the deployment of SDI in Eastern Europe is what Putin has been complaining about for the last two years? In other words that STAR WARS DEFENSE INITIATIVE is becoming practical at about the time that Reagan predicted it would at significantly less cost than its critics predicted.