July 9, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Insight into a troubled mind
At the top of the Volokh Conspiracy queue in my RSS reader is Jonathan Adler's post headlined "Fencing Out Aliens:"
My thought upon reading this: "But they have spaceships. They'll just fly over the fence."
In my defense, I haven't had my morning coffee yet.
Posted by Jane Galt at July 9, 2007 9:37 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>Those Asian carp sure are an advanced species. Perhaps they'll take over the world when they start dangling "people lines" from their spaceships baited with fast food burgers.
Posted by: Gerry on July 9, 2007 10:16 AMIt is interesting to me that those most against a fence vehemently deny the likelihood that it could possibly work (Great and Berlin Walls be damned), dismissing it for cost and efficacy.
But to the extent illegals are not using their spaceships or hopping cargo ships, then tackling the major entry point would seem to make sense. No matter the draw (jobs or benefits), you can't sneak your way through a solid wall manned by a combination of people, dogs, radar, electronics, and tanks.
If this is quickly or simultaneously followed by onerous penalties on business, the tide would halt.
One can then take a moment to decide how to handle the existing 12 million or so in a manner reasonable and humane, forcing them first, at least, to register during a brief three month pre-fine period.
To me a lot of the arguments around immigration, legal and illegal, are just absurd with people angling NOT to actually fix the issue, or pretending certain facts don't exist.
For example, you hear companies arguing for the expansion of H1B and other worker schemes. But take a company like Google. They will get about 2 million applications this year. If we assume just 1/4 are from the U.S. and that only 10% of those are qualified, or even 1%, that leaves Google a pool of some 5000 people to fill its yearly increase. Microsoft and others probably have similar applicant pools and yet, they would argue their absolute need for the specific skill set of Sabu from Mumbai. (And I am not ignoring the great contributions by Indians as programmers, engineers, project managers and venture capitalists as well as being clearly not named "Joe" at the other end of your customer service calls).
You see that type of "issue dishonesty" all over. Like the weekend issue of USA Today that echoed that "men talk as much as women", but failed to reflect that age has a factor in the results, and that while college men and women might chatter away at the same rate, one cannot extrapolate their actions to the post college life and later years, by which time men have totally had the verbal life sucked out of them by women. Had they been wanting to really get an answer to the question of whether women talk more, they might have constructed a different method of measurement.
It's often pc politics over truth.
I don't know, you build Hadrian's Wall and then in a couple of thousand years you have another bloody Scottish Prime Minister. It all seems so pointless.
Posted by: dearieme on July 9, 2007 12:41 PMfinn, your google example shows how ill-informed you are about recruiting. i work for a big4 & all our recruiting decisions are collectively made by our team- we have a points system to evaluate each applicant's attribute and then tally it to get the best candidate. it has worked well most of the time for both campus & experienced hires. most firms i have worked for have some variation of this practice. &then for high demand areas like sap etc. we advertise in national dailies as well& theres a huge referral bonus as well - you know what im fucking too tired to dispel your stupid ignorance but i'll jus say this- we had to let go of two projects in a span of 6 months worth almost 900K b'cos racist morons like you would happily have a much lower gdp if it could just 'keep those people out'! h1b has been abused by some firms but the answer to that is prosecuting them, not wail against the whole program like this.and heres how google recruits fyi
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/technology/28recruit.html?ex=1184126400&en=b97f30f746d0fd4c&ei=5070
Jane:
I am amazed you are braving the 'immigration' fandango again ;-).
1. have you considered the possibility of teleporting? What if the aliens can only use that technology orbit to planet, not between locations on the surface of the Earth?
2. what if aliens actually arrived decades or centuries ago, as a long term policy of integration and infiltration, and are only now mustering their forces in key jurisdictions? (like San Antonio, Texas?)
3. if the aliens use tripods to move around, then fences might be useful in tripping up those tripods *if* they are heat ray resistant.
I am thinking of something like the speeders with their cables in Star Wars V (The Empire Strikes Back)
4. if the aliens are disguised as humans, do we have biometric tools that will identify them at fence crossing points?
5. is this a clever ruse by you, an alien, just like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Six_%28Battlestar_Galactica%29
to double bluff us into believing there are no aliens?
Clearly we are all doomed. As is the United States.
Posted by: Valuethinker on July 10, 2007 5:09 AMMy thought upon reading this: "But they have spaceships. They'll just fly over the fence."
In my defense, I haven't had my morning coffee yet.
Heaven forbid you have, and use, an imagination.
Posted by: Brian on July 10, 2007 7:03 AM