US Virtual Border Fence Doesn't Work 337
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."
Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
This is why I always laugh at NASA promises (Score:4, Insightful)
NASA, the FBI, etc. all seem to follow the same pattern. They get the idea in their head for something big (usually as the result of politicians putting it there or the need to make it look like they're doing something about some big problem). Then they contract the technical stuff out to some contractor who feeds them a line of bullshit (instead of hiring their own people to do it, the way NASA did it in the 60's). Then they hold a big press conference, in which they make grandiose promises about how great this new thing will be (the best ones are accompanied by CGI animation of said great thing). Then they give some contractor a shitload of money. Then the contractor ends up in delays and overruns, forcing government agency to give them even MORE money. Then the contractor either doesn't deliver anything usable at all, delivers a shoddy piece of shit that doesn't even come close to the original promise, or simply delays it until the administration changes or the project gets canceled. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
Re:forced to deliver early, for political reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:forced to deliver early, for political reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh Vey (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you wouldn't.
Ideology is easy when it doesn't hurt you (or, in this case, your pocket).
I'M SHOCKED!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Good, Fast, Cheap... Pick Two (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stop them.. why would we stop them? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:forced to deliver early, for political reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Stop them.. why would we stop them? (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem isn't immigration, it's corruption (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason Mexicans come to the US in droves is because their country is broken. Most of the police and half the military are on the take. Even the honest folks have decided to steer clear of the disaster.
Nothing America erects on that border is going to change the fact that Mexicans can make a decent and safe living in Mexico.
Re:You joke, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the all knowing wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
[ 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.
[
No fence is needed (Score:2, Insightful)
Catch an illegal and send him back, and that's all. If they really wanted to make the illegal aliens stay away, all they'd have to do would be to make illegal entry in this country a felony with a mandatory five year prison sentense for a first offense, fifteen years for a second offense and thirty for a third offense.
Don't hold your breath. The people who run things want to import cheap labor and they're not about to let anyone stop their gravy train.
Re:forced to deliver early, for political reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
A permanent underclass? Hardly. It's not like we're rounding these people up and bringing them to the US against their will. They come here voluntarily, and often at great risk to themselves. Why would they do that if they were being exploited? To put it simply, they come here in droves because life as a fruit picker or whatnot is better than what they were doing before. We are increasing their quality of life, not decreasing it.
Immigration is a win-win situation. We benefit from low-priced labor, freeing our better educated workforce to hold better paying, more productive jobs, and the immigrants get jobs better than the ones they left behind, allowing them a better chance to escape from the poverty of their homeland.
Re:Development Issues (Score:4, Insightful)
If you do it yourself, you'll just be a manager of a larger group with more work, but no more pay.
If you hire Boeing, at least you know you'll be able to quite DHS in a few years and get a nice cooshy job as VP of Product Oversight for $1.5/mil a year for life, because of your aid in getting them the $4 billion contract.
Re:forced to deliver early, for political reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
No they aren't. It's common knowledge about all the stuff that went on behind closed-doors with our current leaders...repubs aren't better at hiding it, they just don't care that they are doing it. Dems are the ones that try to convince you they aren't lying...Repubs say "hey, here is what I have to say, it's full of shit. You know it, I know it, and we also both know you won't do jack about it."
There is definitely a difference.
Re:Stop them.. why would we stop them? (Score:5, Insightful)
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:No fence is needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, if you really want to stop illegal immigration, don't make illegal entry a felony -- make employing illegal immigrants a felony, and start throwing the people who employ them in jail. If the demand dries up, the supply will follow.
Re:forced to deliver early, for political reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You joke, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:forced to deliver early, for political reasons (Score:3, Insightful)
Boeing just got another big chunk of my tax dollars to fix the problem of using the incorrect software in their initial system. That hardly sounds like holding feet to the fire. When they are required to refund some of their initial payment, or the process is opened to their competitors, get back to me, m'kay?
Re:Stupid. (Score:2, Insightful)
Illegal Mexican immigrant laborers are the new slaves of the USA.
The current system is actually a better deal than slavery was for the landowners. Okay, so they have to pay the workers, but they can pay them minimum wage and then demand kickbacks, because they're illegal. And even if they aren't illegal, if they don't have full citizenship yet you can accuse them of things and have them deported. In fact, sometimes they have INS show up on payday, and you only have to pay the few that don't get deported. Meanwhile, the USA is engaged in a systematic campaign of crapping on Mexico with drug laws, NAFTA, and direct military support (espionage, intelligence, equipment) for those whom we have found convenient throughout the years. We do this to most of Central America, but Mexico gets hit the hardest due to simple proximity.
And all this without having to pay for chains, men with whips, or food and housing! Really, throwing a few dirty dollars to the field workers is nothing.
Did I mention that the majority of farm subsidy money goes to major factory farming operations, too? This modern form of slavery is subsidized by the US taxpayer. We abuse Mexicans and pay higher taxes so that we can get a ninety-eight cent head of lettuce in the produce section.
Re:Stupid. (Score:-1, Insightful)
Your dilemma here is imagined. If you need fewer workers to build the car, and have a starved pension fund, the solution is not to hire another pointless worker, "allowing" you to contribute to the pension fund. The solution is to *not* hire the worker and apply what would have been his salary to the starved pension/benefit fund!
In practice, of course:
1) GM and Ford *keep* the benefit fund starved, and throw off the money as dividends an bonuses, in contravention of centuries of precedent regarding order-of-payment. (You don't get to throw off dividends until you're current on loans, and you don't get to pay toward loans until your workers are paid for work already done, and they aren't paid for work already done until the pension fund is satiated.)
2) They do hire the worker, but not to "allow" pension fund contributions. It's because of archaic union contract obligations.
Moreover, making too much of the wrong car, or bad design, or whatever business/engineering strategy you want to critique is not and cannot be the reason American carmakers are in trouble. Proof: Imagine that some supergenuises were running them instead of the current folks, and could make the right decisions. Would that solve/have solved their woes? Nope. Because if such a person could exist, he would ditch GM/Ford and go work for a foreign company that could pay him what he's WORTH -- because they wouldn't be raiding his take to pay for a bunch of old people he's never met.
I think that about covers it
Re:Stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
Second when I was 12 years old I worked in the fields, pulling weeds of all things. Yes the work sucked badly
and the pay was crap but I had a job and earned a wage. A few years later I ended up working in a meat packing plant I was 16 at the time. Yes it was a nasty job but yet again here is a legal white male citizen doing a job that all the idiots say nobody would do. A few years after that yet again making barely over minimum wage running a saw in a lumber mill, hot nasty physical work.
Now granted I make a great deal more today but the work ethic I gained as a young man doing these so
called unwanted jobs contributed 100% to my financial success at a older age.
Your remarks are complete BS, there is plenty of legal citizens that would like, deserve and perhaps even
like these jobs. Hell my wife makes just barely over minimum wage making pizza's, the funny thing is that
the money does not matter to her, she loves her job.