Rocks Thrown at Border Patrol Chopper

You must have missed the point that these workers are *not* illegal..

Oops...my mistake.

But I still think the employers are being cheap, and my point still applies
in a thread about illegals.

Frankie

But I still think the employers are being cheap, and my point still applies
in a thread about illegals.

All employers are cheap, and all employees are mercenary. That's how
the system works.

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Andrew Gideon wrote:

Am I following this correctly? Homeland security, having failed to handle
the problem of illegal immigration, deported *legal* immigrants?

Bingo!

George Patterson
Give a person a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a person to
use the Internet and he won't bother you for weeks.

Perhaps we should arm the copter with machine guns and fire back?
No, that would be barbaric.

Why? A rock can certainly bring down a civilian helicopter if it hits
something critical - a rotor disc, an oil or fuel line, whatever.
Military helicopters are armored against this - but as a result they
weigh a ton (literally that - or more) and cost a fortune to operate.

If this happens too low to autorotate but too high to put down without
energy, the pilot and passenger(s) will be injured or killed. Why is
it barbaric for the pilot to shoot back?

But what is so wrong with stopping illegal immigration?

It would make servants something only the very rich could afford.

Actually, what illegal immigration does is distort our economy and
stifle progress.

Let me give you an example. Most of the pilots at my home field don't
cut their own grass. They have someone come out to do it. It's
miserable work - riding a mower in the hot sun, loading and unloading
equipment - but the price is quite reasonable. It works out to
something like $15-$20 hr on a contract basis. The guy shows up in a
truck with an old gas-powered tractor (that spews lots of hydrocarbon
into the atmosphere) and does all the work. I suspect that he clears
maybe $10/hr at best, with no benefits, when you figure in travel time
and his expenses, and it's seasonal work at that.

This (like most of the jobs illegals do) could be automated - but not
trivially. What's necessary is a mower with some intelligence. It
would know where the boundaries of the property are, and what parts of
it are to be mowed, and it would have some simple sensors to keep from
running over the neighbor's kid (or cat). It would peobably be
electric - which would mean a limited operation time, as it would have
to go back to its station and recharge every 30 minutes - but since it
would never forget what it already did, that would be no big deal. All
the pieces are there - this would be no more complicated than
industrial automation - but there's no incentive. It would cost about
$3 million to design and test the thing, and the first batch you sold
would have bugs that would need to be worked out. Since most people
wouldn't buy one (they would just hire the illegals) you would never
recoup the R&D cost - you would need to sell 50,000 of them in the
first two or three years to make it work, and the first batch would
probably cost $1000 each in such low volumes

Of course it would be a lot different if you had to pay someone a
living wage to do the job. Then the cost would be more like $60/hr,
and people would buy the thing even at $800. Of course as the volume
increased and the patents ran out, the price would fall to where there
it was cheaper than a gasoline riding mower.

This is just one example, but it's fairly typical. Cheap labor is
always the enemy of automation, and certain segments of our economy are
addicted to cheap labor. In the long run, of course, automation is
cheaper than even the cheapest labor (unless you're willing to have
people working and STILL living in a squalor most of us would find
deplorable) but the industries that develop automation can't afford to
think in the long term. If it doesn't have a 3 year payback and a 15%
ROI, it won't happen.

Michael

The OTHER Kevin in San Diego" skiddz "AT" adelphia "DOT wrote:
So I should ****-can my plans to fly for a living and go mow lawns at
$60/hr?? Sounds like of my co-worker's wife who gets something like
$150/hr to [get this!] braid horse manes and tails..


Of course he makes more money; look at the ****ty conditions in which he works.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN

VE

"john smith" wrote in message
.. .
Jay Honeck wrote:
In a perfect world, they would send the gendarmes over to arrest the
illegal -- I would be happy to cooperate -- but they have ZERO interest
in doing this. And apparently ZERO contact with any law enforcement
agency.

Social Security is not Customs and Border Protection nor Immigration.
There are walls put up between the "hands"... deliberately!


When a employee is hired they must complete an I-9 to prove they are legal
to work in the US. This form had the Dept of Justice written at the top
until very recently. Now it has Dept. of Homeland Security on it. All the
DOH would have to do to enforce the immigration laws is require employers to
report anyone who can't produce the ID required for the form.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:RdEPe.281342$x96.23410@attbi_s72...
That's incorrect. We interview Hispanic women all the time (for
housekeeping openings -- their primary source of income, methinks), and
require that each applicant list their Social Security number on their
application.

There is a phone number to call to verify any SS number. If it's not
valid, the person at the other end tells us that "This person should
contact the Social Security Administration, since there is something wrong
with their number." They don't really care if it indicates that the
person is an illegal alien.

In a perfect world, they would send the gendarmes over to arrest the
illegal -- I would be happy to cooperate -- but they have ZERO interest in
doing this. And apparently ZERO contact with any law enforcement agency.

The Federal Government is screwed up far beyond what the average person on
the street can imagine.


You know Jay, you are under no obligation to call that number? Your
obligation is to check the IDs that the person you have offered a job gives
you when you complete the I9. And the burden of if they are real is would a
reasonable person believe these IDs are real.

Also, if you are calling on just the Hispanic applicants you are
discriminating.

When a employee is hired they must complete an I-9 to prove they are legal
to work in the US. This form had the Dept of Justice written at the top
until very recently. Now it has Dept. of Homeland Security on it. All the
DOH would have to do to enforce the immigration laws is require employers to
report anyone who can't produce the ID required for the form.

The civil libertarians would have a bird.

Imagine, employers actually being required to report applicants that
are in the country illegally? Or, better yet, requiring prison time
for those employers who knowingly hire them? Dang, I'll bet we'd have
the problem solved in a matter of weeks.

As an employer, however, I can understand how some would find the
mandatory nature of this law to be an onerous burden -- but what I
don't understand is why (in the short term) we can't make reporting
voluntary?

At the moment, when I discover that an applicant is illegal, I have no
where to turn with that information. Who do I call? The State Patrol?
The police? Ghost Busters? No one seems to care.

It's a stupid, screwed-up system that could be fixed by changing less
than five relatively minor things. Why can't we get this right?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

On 26 Aug 2005 11:15:19 -0700, "Michael"
wrote:


This (like most of the jobs illegals do) could be automated - but not
trivially. What's necessary is a mower with some intelligence. It
would know where the boundaries of the property are, and what parts of
it are to be mowed, and it would have some simple sensors to keep from
running over the neighbor's kid (or cat). It would peobably be
electric - which would mean a limited operation time, as it would have
to go back to its station and recharge every 30 minutes - but since it
would never forget what it already did, that would be no big deal. All
the pieces are there - this would be no more complicated than

google search for automatic lawn mower comes up with 162,000 hits,
including production electric robotic lawn mowers already for sale...

In article ne.com,
Andrew Gideon wrote:

Am I following this correctly? Homeland security, having failed to handle
the problem of illegal immigration, deported *legal* immigrants?

Based upon this, I need to take a better look at my neighbors. Bin Laden is
probably living in some suburban US town watching CNN. The largest threat
to his health is that he'll kill himself laughing at our "war against
terrorism".


Very nicely put.

--
Eduardo K. |
http://www.carfun.cl | "World domination, now"
http://e.nn.cl | Linus Torvalds