Eliminating illegal immigration

Dear Editor:The debate about immigration reform puts a lot of emphasis in securing our borders to avoid having another 10 million undocumented immigrants sometime in the future. I question the effectiveness of all the proposed solutions. Even having electrified fences, mining the border area and having all the armed forces guarding the borders, we will not be able to keep out highly motivated people who want to come to the US because they are following the only voice that never lies, that is the voice of the stomach. More revolutionary thinking is required to solve this problem. Given that the only reason undocumented immigrants come to the US is because they can find jobs here, then the obvious answer is not to have jobs for them. We can not depend on businesses to deny jobs to illegals as long as it is financially profitable to employ them and especially so because they are willing to do jobs that most Americans are unwilling to do. I propose that the answer lies in technology. We must build the machinery needed to eliminate menial jobs from the economy. The day that we can take a car to a tunnel and get it at the other end completely cleaned, washed, vacuumed and polished without the intervention of human hands we would have taken a big step into eliminating a good source of jobs for illegals. When our agriculture machinery allows farmers to automatize the harvesting of tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables we will accomplish what no other action can do to eliminate illegals aliens prospective jobs. Now this will require a true high tech effort to get it done. Probably tomatoes will have to be genetically modified to have stronger skin so that they don't bruise when picked up by machines before totally automatic harvesting machines can be produced. It doesn't take much imagination to create an urgent high tech project designed to create the equipment and products necessary to eliminate minor labor from our society. The devil is in the details and in our elected officials doing the right thing for the country instead of what it is politically favorable for their careers. Our science and engineering students are getting the training necessary in robotics and cybernetics design to be able to accomplish the development of the necessary equipment. Any funding appropriated to this project will be a lot smaller than the one needed to implement the plans currently under consideration. This proposal makes a lot of sense so I don't expect that it will be ever considered. Jorge Montero Downey

********** Published: July 25, 2013 - Volume 12 - Issue 15