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Legal Immigration Declines under President Trump

Tuesday’s New York Times front page includes an article titled “Immigration By Legal Path Begins to Fall” showing how President Trump’s efforts to reduce the foreign influx into America has begun to turn the tide.

We know already that Trump’s Remain in Mexico deal has severely chilled the asylum fraud since fewer than one percent of scammers have been admitted after the new procedure was implemented. For a few years previous, every illegal alien was a “victim” and therefore eligible for asylum, but that’s pretty much over under the current administration.

But the decrease of legal immigration is a surprise, since the world population continues to grow and will reach 8 billion in a few years. So push factors remain, but apparently it makes a difference when the occupant of the White House is not dedicated to maximum foreigner influx.

Still, the future lies ahead, and it looks less American for us US citizens. The best thing to do would be to end immigration entirely for many reasons.

Robots and AI will be doing millions of jobs in a few years so we won’t need immigrants for those occupations. Seriously, automation makes immigration obsolete.

Having millions of foreign residents has no advantage other than perhaps restaurants, and that’s hardly a reason to continue immigration — I’d rather eat boiled potatoes and burnt hamburger.

Some areas have become Spanish-speaking zones where you might as well be in Mexico or Cuba. And language diversity is not a plus, it’s a danger when you don’t know what’s going on.

California seems headed for another drought, judging from a painfully dry winter, so we don’t need to import any more water-users here — 39 million is more than enough.

So having fewer immigrants of any sort is a win for all Americans. Let the foreigners fix their own countries as they once did. Double win.

Here’s a reprint of the New York Times article:

As Trump Barricades the Border, Legal Immigration Is Starting to Plunge, New York Times, February 24, 2020

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s immigration policies — from travel bans and visa restrictions to refugee caps and asylum changes — have begun to deliver on a longstanding goal: Legal immigration has fallen more than 11 percent and a steeper drop is looming.

While Mr. Trump highlights the construction of a border wall to stress his war on illegal immigration, it is through policy changes, not physical barriers, that his administration has been able to diminish the flow of migrants into the United States. Two more measures took effect Friday and Monday, an expansion of his travel ban and strict wealth tests on green card applicants.

“He’s really ticking off all the boxes. It’s kind of amazing,” said Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group. “In an administration that’s been perceived to be haphazard, on immigration they’ve been extremely consistent and barreling forward.”

The number of people who obtained lawful permanent residence, besides refugees who entered the United States in previous years, declined to 940,877 in the 2018 fiscal year from 1,063,289 in the 2016 fiscal year, according to an analysis of government data by the National Foundation for American Policy. Four years ago, legal immigration was at its highest level since 2006, when 1,266,129 people obtained lawful permanent residence in the United States.

And immigration experts say new policies will accelerate the trend. A report released on Monday by the foundation projected a 30 percent plunge in legal immigration by 2021 and a 35 percent dip in average annual growth of the U.S. labor force.

Trump administration officials have said that immigration into the country should be based on merit and skills, not the family-based system that for decades has allowed immigrants to bring their spouses and children to live with them.

“President Trump continues to deliver on his promise to the American people to enforce our nation’s immigration laws,” Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, the acting secretary of homeland security, wrote in The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, on Monday.

The rapid declines come as record-low unemployment has even the president’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, confiding to a gathering in Britain that “we are desperate, desperate for more people.”

But the doors have been blocked in multiple ways. Those fleeing violence or persecution have found asylum rules tightened and have been forced to wait in squalid camps in Mexico or sent to countries like Guatemala as their cases are adjudicated. People who have languished in displaced persons camps for years face an almost impossible refugee cap of 18,000 this year, down from the 110,000 that President Barack Obama set in 2016.

Family members hoping to travel legally from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia were blocked by the president’s travel ban.

Increased vetting and additional in-person interviews have further winnowed foreign travelers. The number of visas issued to foreigners abroad looking to immigrate to the United States has declined by about 25 percent, to 462,422 in the 2019 fiscal year from 617,752 in 2016.

And two more tough policies have now taken effect. The expansion of Mr. Trump’s travel ban to six additional countries, including Africa’s most populous, Nigeria, began on Friday, and the wealth test, which effectively sets a wealth floor for would-be immigrants, started on Monday. Those will reshape immigration in the years to come, according to experts.

The travel and visa bans, soon to cover 13 countries, are almost sure to be reflected in immigration numbers in the near future. Of the average of more than 537,000 people abroad granted permanent residency from 2014 to 2016, including through a diversity lottery system, nearly 28,000, or 5 percent, would be blocked under the administration’s newly expanded travel restrictions, according to an analysis of State Department data.

But the wealth test — or public charge rule — may prove the most consequential change yet. Around two-thirds of the immigrants who obtained permanent legal status from 2012 to 2016 could be blocked from doing so under the new rule, which denies green cards to those who are likely to need public assistance, according to a study by the Migration Policy Institute. (Continues)

Democratic Debate Includes Automation Discussion

I couldn’t face watching three hours of Democrats jabbering at each other on Tuesday’s debate, but it was interesting that automation came up as a question from news person Erin Burnet (Transcript):

BURNETT: I want to turn now to jobs. According to a recent study, about a quarter of American jobs could be lost to automation in just the next 10 years. Ohio is one of the states likely to be hardest hit.

Senator Sanders, you say your federal jobs guarantee is part of the answer to the threat from automation, but tens of millions of Americans could end up losing their jobs. Are you promising that you will have a job for every single one of those Americans?

SANDERS: Damn right we will. And I’ll tell you why. If you look at what goes on in America today, we have an infrastructure which is collapsing. We could put 15 million people to work rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our water systems, our wastewater plants, airports, et cetera.

“Rebuilding” is not a clear career choice for young people, and anyway, construction is becoming at least as automated as other general fields. Most of the candidates who responded on the topic showed limited knowledge on the automation threat to employment.

Below, in certain types of manufacturing, human workers have largely disappeared from the floor as they are replaced by robots.

Senator Warren has been rising in the polls and may well be the Dems’ candidate, but she stuck to her anti-business position rather than recognizing the new and unique problem of smart machines:

BURNETT: Senator Warren, you wrote that blaming job loss on automation is, quote, “a good story, except it’s not really true.” So should workers here in Ohio not be worried about losing their jobs to automation?

WARREN: So the data show that we have had a lot of problems with losing jobs, but the principal reason has been bad trade policy. The principal reason has been a bunch of corporations, giant multinational corporations who’ve been calling the shots on trade, giant multinational corporations that have no loyalty to America.

Fortunately, automation-aware candidate Andrew Yang was able to make his point:

YANG: Senator Warren, I’ve been talking to Americans around the country about automation. And they’re smart. They see what’s happening around them. Their Main Street stores are closing. They see a self-serve kiosk in every McDonalds, every grocery store, every CVS. Driving a truck is the most common job in 29 states, including this one; 3.5 million truck drivers in this country. And my friends in California are piloting self-driving trucks.

What is that going to mean for the 3.5 million truckers or the 7 million Americans who work in truck stops, motels, and diners that rely upon the truckers getting out and having a meal? Saying this is a rules problem is ignoring the reality that Americans see around us every single day.

This topic appearing in a debate is real progress. No such discussions occurred in the 2016 campaign.

Now if the Democrats would admit that automation makes low-skilled immigration obsolete. . .

Ford Robot Takes On Delivery Duties in Spain

Here’s a new robot from the Ford company designed to work in its factories. It’s basically a filing cabinet on wheels that delivers replacement parts on the floor.

Below, Ford’s Survival robot consists of cubby holes for parts — each with its own identifying number on the door.

Users in the Valencia, Spain, plant report success with the machine, and the company may expand its implementation.

As usual, workers are assured that the machine is there to “help” them, not replace them. Plus, it’s entirely too cute when a manager refers to the gizmo as a “valuable team member.”

The Ford delivery robot is a simple thing, but it indicates a much larger trend in business. Remember that industry is not spending millions overall in its automation redesign to make work easier for employees; the change is to save money. And when smart machines become cheaper than workers, then the humans will be laid off.

As the work universe changes, First World nations like America won’t need many (any?) Third World migrants/aliens to work cheap and simple because machines will do it better.

Note how the article below includes a couple job loss studies associated with automation:

Here’s the autonomous robot Ford built. It’s one of the company’s newest employees at a factory in Spain, CNBC, May 9, 2019

• The Ford Motor manufacturing plant in Valencia has a new delivery employee — an autonomous robot named “Survival.”

• The self-driving robot uses lidar (light detection and ranging) technology to visualize its surroundings and deliver spare parts.

• The robot made its debut at Ford as workers around the world become increasingly worried their jobs will one day be stolen by technology.

The Ford Motor manufacturing plant in Valencia, Spain, has a new delivery employee — an autonomous robot named “Survival.”

The self-driving robot uses lidar (light detection and ranging) technology to visualize its surroundings and deliver spare parts to where they’re needed in the facility. It was manufactured by Ford engineers and is the first of its kind to be used at one of the company’s European plants.

Ford said Survival gives employees more time to undertake more complex tasks.

“When it first started you could see employees thinking they were in some kind of sci-fi movie, stopping and staring at it as it went by,” Eduardo García Magraner, manufacturing manager at the Valencia factory, said in a statement. “Now they just get on with their jobs knowing the robot is smart enough to work around them.”

The robot made its debut as workers around the world become increasingly worried their jobs will one day be stolen by technology.

Nearly half of the world’s jobs face some risk of being automated, according to research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. A Brookings Institution report warns that a quarter of Americans are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation.

Workers in food services, manufacturing, administrative support, farming, transportation and construction have the greatest likelihood of being replaced by robots.

In 2018, a record number of robots were put to work in North America. According to the Robotic Industries Association, 35,880 robots were shipped to the U.S., Canada and Mexico last year, with 53% going to the automotive industry. (Continues)

The Automated Life of the Future Is Considered

Below is an excerpt from a new book, The Culture of AI, Everyday Life and the Digital Revolution. Unlike most books now available about the coming technological transformation, it is written by a sociologist rather than a Silicon Valley type. So it may address the cultural effects that arise from automation and smart machines taking a bigger place in the workplace and society generally.

The enormous changes about to descend upon the modern world should be considered more carefully by political leaders in Washington who now seem mostly asleep. America’s jobs economy is booming now, but tech experts think that a more widespread use of robots, automation and artificial intelligence is coming in a few years.

It’s likely that the US won’t need an extra million low-skilled Hondurans (which is current rate of inflow through America’s open border, more or less) in a decade or so when the smart machines become less expensive to hire than even the cheapest illegal alien.

Robotics and jobs: Where do we stand?, The Adelaide Review, By Anthony Elliott, March 25, 2019

With the AI-powered workplace of tomorrow arriving sooner than expected, what does this mean for us?

The debate about robotics on the future economy and job market is one divided squarely between transformationalists and sceptics, but that debate has in fact been increasingly undermined by the dynamics of AI and its relentless acceleration. Recent evidence indicates that robotics and AI are heavily impacting the economy, destroying low-wage jobs and increasingly eating away at higher-skill occupations as people are increasingly replaced by intelligent algorithms. There is evidence that the workplace of tomorrow, powered by AI and accelerating digital technology, is about to arrive much sooner than anticipated by many analysts.

A 2017 report from the World Economic Forum estimates the net loss of over 5 million jobs across 15 developed countries by 2020. Another report, published by the International Labor Organization, predicts that over 137 million workers in the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Cambodia are likely to be replaced by robots in the near future. Moreover, as this tipping point in robotic job deployment is reached, advancing technology is driving many developed economies towards higher inequality. The global digital economy is generating more monopolies and resulting in greater income gaps between rich and poor, with many workers ending up unemployed and many highly skilled professionals increasing their wealth.

Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs has explored the stunning historical impact of machines in reducing the overall burden of work, and also their adverse distributional consequences on wealth. Drawing on US census data, Sachs notes that, whilst agricultural workers comprised 36% of the American labor force in 1900, they made up less than 1% of the labor market in 2015.

There has also been a sharp decline in the numbers of production workers (those working in mining, construction and manufacturing), from 24% in 1900 to 14% in 2015 of the US labor force. For Sachs, mechanization and machines lie at the core of the global shift from rural to urban life.

“Machines”, writes Sachs, “have dramatically eased the toil of most Americans and extended our lives, in stark contrast to the hard, long toil and lower life expectancies that continue for hundreds of millions of people around the world who are still trapped in subsistence agriculture”. Sachs argues that there is a clear disconnect between ongoing labor productivity growth and wages, which is leading to a decline in the share of labor in national income, and one principal reason for this is the displacement of workers by robots and smart machines. Workers most impacted by the astonishing growth in automation, according to Sachs, are those in jobs which are repetitive, predictable, and requiring only low to moderate levels of expertise.

But automation as a system should not be held to involve the progressive displacement of employment in toto. Sceptics have been quick to caution that robots cannot (at least as yet) reprogram or service their own operations. This point is often made by sceptics to underscore that technological innovation creates new, high-skilled jobs. The argument is that robotic automation, in fact, generates job creation for technicians, computer programmers and other newly generated digital workers. But the evidence for this claim looks increasingly brittle. Futurist Martin Ford convincingly shows that the US economy, for instance, has become progressively less effective at creating new jobs. This is largely because disruptive technological shifts are driving people out of the labor force. Most significantly, recent evidence demonstrates that every new robot entering the workplace leads to at least six job losses. Continue reading this article

Port of Los Angeles: Drivers Resist Automated Trucks

It’s rare to see workers fight back against automation taking their jobs, but it’s useful for them to have a union that actually helps its clients. That’s what has been going on in the LA docks, where automation has been a source of contention for several years.

Unfortunately for the workers, the containerized shipping industry lends itself very easily to automation: its uniform boxes go smoothly from enormous ocean carriers through the ports to trucks which deliver Asian-produced merchandise to American consumers.

Below, the world’s largest container ship, the quarter-mile-long OMA CGM Benjamin Franklin which can carry 18,000 containers, is shown docked in the Port of Los Angeles.

The enormity of Pacific trade is enabled in part by the efficiency of containerized shipping, and roboticized ports are an important cog in the global money-making machine. Having driverless electric cargo trucks is apparently seen by the top office brains as speeding up the process and cutting the large paychecks of workers — funny how the captains of industry forget that well-paid employees are also big-spending shoppers.

Below, a Detroit paper reprinted the LA Times article posted below:

Dockworkers battle driverless trucks plan, Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2019

Los Angeles – A fierce struggle over automation has erupted at the Port of Los Angeles, as local union officials representing some 12,000 dockworkers demand that one of the world’s largest shipping firms abandon a plan to introduce driverless electric cargo trucks.

Shouting, whistling and jeering, more than 1,200 union members, local business owners and community activists packed a four-hour hearing Thursday before the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners. The board voted to postpone a construction permit for the automated system after an offer by Mayor Eric Garcetti to mediate the dispute.

“The decision before the board may have far-reaching impacts on the pace of automation at our port and could define how the port will compete and sustain jobs into the foreseeable future,” Garcetti wrote in a letter unveiled at the hearing.

The mayor called for a 28-day delay in deciding on the permit, adding that negotiations “should serve as the basis of a new task force to explore automation and its impacts on the future of the Port of Los Angeles and others across the state.”

Port automation dates to the 1960s, when dockworker unions agreed to the introduction of containers, and consequent job losses, in exchange for higher pay and benefits. Today a typical full-time Southern California longshore worker earns more than $100,000 a year. But thousands of so-called “casuals,” who are not yet registered union members, earn far less, are eligible only for part-time hours, and do not yet get health or retirement benefits.

A 2008 International Longshore and Warehouse Union contract, renewed in 2015, explicitly allowed West Coast ports to continue automating. Two large terminals – one at the Port of Long Beach and one in Los Angeles – have already introduced the driverless vehicles known as UTRs, or utility tractor rigs.

But automation at the 484-acre facility operated for Denmark’s Moller-Maersk by APM Terminals is prompting an uproar from local union members who are having second thoughts about the current contract and believe the permit will lead to automation across all 12 of the port complex’s terminals.

The struggle comes as Los Angeles and Long Beach, the busiest ports in the nation, are enjoying record cargo traffic, despite the threat of an escalating trade war with China. The twin ports handle a third of U.S. container traffic, but they have lost market share to facilities along the Gulf of Mexico and, since the widening of the Panama Canal, along the East Coast.

APM officials decline to say how many jobs will be eliminated if what they call “self-guided container handling equipment” is introduced. Union officials say hundreds are at stake. One in nine jobs in the five-county region is linked to commerce flowing through the port complex, according to port officials.

APM characterizes its proposed automated, battery-powered vehicles, which would replace diesel-fueled rigs, as a response to the port’s clean air rules. But union officials say APM could introduce manned electric vehicles instead. (Continues)

Robots Get End-of-Year List

Year-end lists can be an interesting review of the blur that modern life has become, and the evolution of technology is extra rapid by its nature.

Wired’s list of robotics shows no interest in associated job loss for human workers, but if you look closely, the improving capabilities of smart machines are a warning of things to come. In one example, robots are placed in Airbnbs to familiarize themselves with the environment — with duties in housekeeping to follow, presumably.

One familiar machine is being retired, Rethink Robotics’ Baxter model. It was inexpensively priced to be affordable for smaller businesses — and replace humans in performing basic movements.

Below, the Baxter robot excels at simple tasks, like packing boxes.

In addition, we should recognize that rapidly improving automation technology will soon make low-skilled immigration totally obsolete.

The Year in Robots, from Boston Dynamics to (RIP) Baxter, Wired.com, December 29, 2018

DEPENDING ON YOUR perspective, 2018 either brought us closer to salvation by way of robots, or closer to doom by way of robots: Where some see the end of meaningless work, others see the end of humanity, also meaningless. (We’re in the former camp, by the way.) Whatever your biases toward the machines, this year has been a big one for the field of robotics, which continues to roll around joyously in the convergence of falling prices, better software and hardware, and skyrocketing demand from industry.

Given that it’s That Time of Year again, we’ve collected a list of the biggest moments in robotics in 2018, from the continued ascendance of Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini quadruped to the rapid rise and fall of the home robot.

Boston Dynamics’ Robot Dog, Finally Unleashed — Taking a quick break from uploading videos of its humanoid robot Atlas doing backflips, Boston Dynamics announced that one of its machines, the four-legged SpotMini, will finally go on sale in 2019. The question now becomes: What do you do with a robot that can fight off stick-wielding humans? One idea might be to load it up with cameras to run security details, or to inspect construction sites. Whatever the case, SpotMini’s forthcoming career in the real world is a big deal for robots of all kinds, which have struggled to escape factories and labs to walk among us.

Goodbye Baxter, the Gentle Giant Among Robots — Alas, as one robot’s career begins, another ends. In October, Rethink Robotics said it was folding, meaning its most famous offering, Baxter, faces retirement. It’s hard to overstate the impact Baxter has had on robotics—because of its low price point and ease of use, it’s become the go-to research platform in universities the world over. Inevitably, though, another more advanced platform will take its place. But let’s give a hand to Baxter, the Robot That Launched a Thousand Discoveries.

Darpa’s Robots Go Underground — Baxter had the luxury of relatively clean, dry, climate-controlled environs, but not so for the machines of Darpa’s next robotics challenge (the same variety of challenge that gave us the unintentionally hilarious face-planting bipeds of 2015). This year the far-out research wing of the Pentagon detailed a grueling underground course through caves and tunnels and bunkers. Unlike previous challenges, teams will be able to deploy a variety of robots that work together to overcome one of the most brutal environments on Earth.

Robots Take Vacations in Airbnbs — Even robots need the occasional change of scene. This year Carnegie Mellon University researchers booked their robots rooms in Airbnbs. The rooms were rented to teach the robots how to manipulate objects in unfamiliar environments. Because teaching a robot how to grasp things in the lab just won’t cut it: To get the machines to work well in the real world, researchers have to train them how to recognize objects against unfamiliar backgrounds, like patterned carpet. And yes, in case you were wondering, the owners of the Airbnbs were notified beforehand that their renters were robots. And yes, they got along famously. (Continues)

Unskilled Illegal Aliens Won’t Be Needed for Bricklaying because Automation

Presumably some of the Honduran caravansters headed north to invade America have construction skills and may think they can make a pile of Yankee dollars working in the building trades.

That expectation would not be unreasonable, since CIS reported in 2013 that only 66 percent of US construction workers were Americans.

Below, the Wall Street Journal published one of the many photos of Honduran invaders carrying their flag, along with a Guatemalan one in this case.

However, the window of humans working cheap appears to be shrinking because of the rapidly growing technologies of computers, robots and automation.

One traditional construction skill is bricklaying, but machines are coming that can accomplish that task cheaper and faster.

Remember, that in this job category along with many others, humans will no longer be needed in the future. Therefore:

Automation Makes Immigration Obsolete.

Below, the SAM Semi Automated Mason, which is another brand of machine bricklayer.

I reported on bricklaying machines in 2015 when the Hadrian machine was being showcased. Now that company is partnering up with the Wienerberger, the world’s largest clay block manufacturer. So the bricks and machines will be designed to complement each other and be very efficient.

Wienerberger develops bricklaying robot, Construction Manager Magazine, October 22, 2018

Building materials giant Wienerberger has teamed up with an Australian robotics company to develop a bricklaying robot.

The Hadrian X construction robot has been devised in partnership with Fastbrick Robotics and will lay clay blocks specially manufactured by Wienerberger.

The companies plan to run a pilot project in Europe before the new blocks are launched in Wienerberger’s market together with the Hadrian X machine.

Hadrian X has been developed for outdoor work and uses special technology to compensate for movements caused by wind, vibrations or counter-movements in real time. (Continues)

Tokyo’s World Robot Summit Reveals Increasing Capability of Automation

CBS found plenty of amusements at Japan’s World Robot Summit, like an automated ping-pong partner and a mechanical sniffer dog that checks for foot odor.

But if you watch closely, the coming social and economic revolution can be seen. Japan is a leader in automation in part because of its slow-growing population (no immigration!), and the work still needs to get done.

Below, a robot and human work together in the “co-bot” mode as industry has called it.

There is not a lot that can be done about the approaching wave of job-destroying automation, but we should certainly end immigration as an obsolete institution.

Machines at Japan’s World Robot Summit host TV shows and help you pass the sniff test, CBS This Morning, October 20, 2018

Tokyo is hosting the World Robot Summit this week and it’s packed with the usual assortment of the practical, the weird, and the entertaining.

When it comes to factory robots, Japan is king. More than half of all industrial robots sold last year were made in the country.

The hazardous behemoths of old are getting kinder and gentler. Once corralled behind fences, factory bots are now working side by side and even collaborating with humans.

“Lifting 40-pound components is a real strain on human bodies. So robots do the heavy lifting and people do the light, complex work,” one developer told CBS News’ Lucy Craft.

Modern robots now have a light enough touch to grab — and delicately box — potato chips. The world’s first high-precision, tactile robot arm enables users to remotely sense what’s being touched, even from 3,000 miles away.

The technology could transform fields from agriculture to medicine and disaster response.  (Continues)

Euronews has an interesting piece about the Summit where a robot is shown installing sheetrock, after which a Japanese man says, “We hope to use this sort of robot in place of humans in fields such as aircraft and sea vessel construction.”

Robot Installs Drywall

The Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Institute (AIST), a Japanese research facility based in Tokyo, has put out a video that’s receiving a lot of attention on the internet:

The Japanese are particularly positive toward automation generally, because of their lack of population growth (no immigration!) and hence fewer worker humans coming online in the future.

In today’s example, we see a strong and capable humanoid robot attaching a piece of sheetrock to the wall. Its robot arms are already fitted out with tools to do the task — so efficient!

The AIST robot can lift sheetrock, carry it to the wall and attach it to the joists.

Construction workers who earn their living by hanging sheetrock should be concerned that the HRP-5P will soon be cheaper than there are, at which point the humans will be dispensable.

It’s another example that many low-skilled workers are slated for obsolescence because of improved automation, a situation that makes continued immigration of low-skilled persons to be an obsolete  policy.

Humanoid construction robot installs drywall by itself, Endgadget.com, October 1, 2018

It’s clever, if also a commentary on Japan’s labor priorities.

If Japan’s Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Institute has its way, construction workers might be a thing of the past. Researchers have built HRP-5P, a humanoid bot that can handle a variety of construction tasks when there’s either a staffing shortage or serious hazards. The prototype uses a mix of environment detection, object recognition and careful movement planning to install drywall by itself — it can hoist up boards and fasten them with a screwdriver.

The design doesn’t have as much freedom of movement as a human being, but makes up for that with numerous joints that flex to degrees you wouldn’t see in real people. It won’t always look the most natural when doing its job, but it’ll be effective. It can also correct for slips, and it’s not deterred when it has a limited field of view.

AIST’s robot is methodical, but you can’t call it quick given its tendency to take baby steps and otherwise act cautiously. The potential is huge, however. In addition to typical building construction work, robots like this could also help assemble aircraft and ships. The team is aiming for collaboration with private companies that would treat HRP-5P as a development “platform” that could lead to further breakthroughs. (Continues)

U.S. Lags Behind in Robot Readiness

The topic of a recent Washington Post article is hard to dispute: the United States is not planning ahead for the coming technological revolution to the world of employment. Certainly the subject of automation with its destructive effect on jobs is ignored or rarely mentioned in the capitol city.

There was a 2016 Senate hearing titled The Transformative Impact of Robots and Automation and another hearing the following year, Transportation Innovation: Automated Trucks and Our Nation’s Highways. Neither received the media attention deserved for the job-killing technology and the changes coming to the workplace.

Meanwhile, the tech community has hoisted a number of warning signs: Oxford researchers forecast in 2013 that nearly half of American jobs were vulnerable to machine or software replacement within 20 years. Rice University computer scientist Moshe Vardi believes that in 30 years humans will become largely obsolete, and world joblessness will reach 50 percent. The Gartner tech advising company believes that one-third of jobs will be done by machines by 2025. The consultancy firm PwC published a report last year that forecast robots could take 38 percent of US jobs by 2030. Last November the McKinsey Global Institute reported that automation “could displace up to 800 million workers — 30 percent of the global workforce — by 2030.” Forrester Research estimates that robots and artificial intelligence could eliminate nearly 25 million jobs in the United States over the next decade, but it should create nearly 15 million positions, resulting in a loss of 10 million US jobs.

Naturally it is unwise to continue immigration at current levels when jobs to support them are already disappearing. Some manufacturing has returned to the United States because of automation: use of the advanced technology means America’s higher wages are no longer determinative to where things get made.

The Washington Post article (reprinted in the SF Chronicle below) emphasizes education and retraining for the techno-future which is certainly advisable and overdue.

The United States is way behind other countries on robot ‘readiness,’ report says, by Danielle Paquette, San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 2018

The United States lags behind other countries in readiness for an increasingly automated world, placing ninth on a ranking of 25 advanced economies, according to a new report from Swiss technology giant ABB.

South Korea, Singapore, Germany and Canada are better prepared for the rise of machines, thanks largely to their education systems and labor policies, the authors of the Automation Readiness Index concluded.

Researchers graded the nations on three main categories: their innovation environment, which included money spent on research and development; school policies, from early curriculums to lifelong learning programs, and public workforce development, such as government-led efforts to retrain workers.

No country is “genuinely ready” for the technological shift that is expected to displace millions of workers worldwide in the next three decades, they found – but the United States is especially underprepared for the jobs of the future.

Guido Jouret, ABB’s chief digital officer, singled out the U.S. educational system, which pushes students toward two or four-year degrees. Colleges tend to be less nimble when it comes to keeping up with technological changes, and companies will seek workers who can adapt to cutting-edge developments.

Germany, in contrast, encourages technical training, which is generally more reactive to immediate employer needs. Sixty percent of young adults in the country train as apprentices in manufacturing, IT, banking, construction and other fields, compared with 5 percent of Americans.

“We lack this vocational training track,” said Jouret, who works in San Francisco.

Susan Lund, a labor economist at the global consulting firm McKinsey, said U.S. students tend to feel more pressure to take the university route, even if it’s outside their budget.

“Not everyone needs a four-year college degree,” she said . ” We could do a lot to build more career pathways. Even just skill-credentialing to enable people to get a basic, entry-level job.”

(Continues)

New York Times Frets over Suffering Illegal Aliens in Fire-Ravaged Wine Country

The Times is concerned that the recent infernos in northern California have left many of the foreign workers homeless, or certainly with fewer housing choices. The paper fears that they might pick up and depart, leaving wineries with no workers for the vineyards.

Interestingly, many of the grape pickers are illegal immigrants, even though the H-2A visa allows farmers to have as many foreign ag workers as they want.

But technology provides the answer to any fire-caused labor shortage with a variety of agricultural robots. The video below reports that regarding the chore of pruning back shoots, “In a nine-hour workday, a crew of about 20 workers can get to 200 plants, but with these machines a crew of just three workers can get to over 14,000.”

The machine still needs a driver, but a self-driving tractor-robot for grape-picking can’t be far off.

A French inventor has created a more futuristic-looking machine, called a Wall-Ye, for tending the grapes, shown below. It is a tiny, less tractor-like machine that putters around from the ground level to do its thing. The video following says the inventor hopes to put the machine into production in a few months, and the cost will be around 25,000 euros.

So the New York Times needn’t worry about agricultural tasks getting done — that sector of the automation revolution is moving ahead quite rapidly.

As Fires Move On, Wine Country Wonders Whether Immigrants Will, Too, New York Times, October 17, 2017

Many of the foreign-born workers the region depends on are undocumented and do not qualify for most disaster aid. They may struggle to find affordable housing.

SEBASTOPOL, Calif. — The lush vineyards that dot the hillsides and valleys here largely survived the fires that leveled neighborhood after neighborhood to the east.

Crushed cabernet sauvignon, merlot and other grapes in tanks are now fermenting into wines that have earned California a prestigious place among global producers.

But the wine industry and the lodging, restaurant and construction sectors that help make this bucolic region a draw for millions of visitors each year are now bracing for a different crisis: the potential loss of many members of their immigrant work force.

Some 5,700 houses and structures have been destroyed and many more damaged by the blazes that barreled through Northern California last week. About 100,000 people were displaced, temporarily or permanently.

It is still too early to know how many of them were immigrants, who are in the most precarious position of any group. Because many of them are in the country illegally, they are ineligible for most disaster aid, raising concerns that those without places to live will move to other regions where housing is more plentiful and cheaper.

“To function, we have to be able to retain the immigrant workers in the area,” said Cameron Mauritson, who grows grapes on 350 acres in Sonoma County for 60 wineries. Losing them, he said, would be “catastrophic to our economy.”

In absolute numbers, the population of immigrants in Los Angeles, Oakland and other California metropolitan areas dwarfs that of Sonoma County. But immigrants play a significant role here: nearly one-fifth of the residents in Santa Rosa’s metropolitan area are foreign-born, according to an analysis by Manuel Pastor, a professor at the University of Southern California who studies immigration. Latin American immigrants, mainly from Mexico, dominate the blue-collar work force.

(Continues)

Tucker Carlson Considers Trump’s 70-Point List of Immigration Enforcement

On Monday, Tucker Carlson examined the latest from the White House about enforcing law and sovereignty, noting, “The administration has now put forward a 70-point immigration plan which calls for easier deportations of people here illegally, a border wall or a partial border wall anyway and new limits on chain migration, which is the idea that once you get here all of your relatives can come. Those are all preconditions for any future amnesty of DACA beneficiaries. Could this be the beginning of real immigration reform?”

Tucker chatted up a liberal radio host from Los Angeles, Ethan Bearman, who was quite chipper about continuing the import of foreign workers. Interestingly, automation came up and Tucker connected the dots. He didn’t say “Automation makes immigration obsolete” but pretty close!

ETHAN BEARMAN: I want people out of the shadows, so they’re not abused and they’re not subjugated by unscrupulous people who take advantage of them while they’re here working. By the way, one of the advantages of a long term change here with increased minimum wages is you’re gonna see Silicon Valley fill that void. John Deere just bought a huge company — it was over three hundred million dollars, to buy a company that makes the lettuce bot to automate some of that so there are long term trends that are happening here as well, but why are why do we want to be as mean as possible?

TUCKER CARLSON: I like immigrants, I actually really do. I grew up in California. I like them. But I think our primary responsibility is to Americans, but I wonder as a macro question, if we’re automating a lot of these jobs — and you just said we’re going to — why do we need 1.1. million legal low-skilled workers every year and an unknown but high number of illegal ones? What’s the point, what are they gonna do exactly? If jobs are going away, why are we importing all these people? Has anyone ever stopped to ask that question?

In fact, smart farm machines have been coming on strong for a long time, and the advances in ag technology are making human farm laborers a thing of the past. When a farmer can rent a robot weeding machine for $300/month, why would he bother with a crew of Mexicans? The future of farming is automated — along with many other industries.

Now, back to the larger subject of Trump’s List. NumbersUSA has a simplified enumeration, excerpted immediately below. The voluminous entire list follows that.

WH Immigration Principles Call for Ending Chain Migration & Mandatory E-Verify, October 8, 2017

BORDER SECURITY: Build a southern border wall and close legal loopholes that enable illegal immigration and swell the court backlog.

• Fund and complete construction of the southern border wall.

• Authorize the Department of Homeland Security to raise and collect fees from visa services and border-crossings

• Fund border security and enforcement activities.

• Ensure the safe and expeditious return of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and family units.

• End abuse of our asylum system by tightening standards, imposing penalties for fraud, and ensuring detention while claims are verified.

• Remove illegal border crossers quickly by hiring an additional 370 Immigration Judges and 1,000 ICE attorneys.

• Discourage illegal re-entry by enhancing penalties and expanding categories of inadmissibility.

• Improve expedited removal.

• Increase northern border security.

INTERIOR ENFORCEMENT: Enforce our immigration laws and return visa overstays.

• Protect innocent people in sanctuary cities.

• Authorize and incentivize States and localities to help enforce Federal immigration laws.

• Strengthen law enforcement by hiring 10,000 more ICE officers and 300 Federal prosecutors.

• End visa overstays by establishing reforms to ensure their swift removal.

• Stop catch-and-release by correcting judicial actions that prevent ICE from keeping dangerous aliens in custody pending removal and expanding the criteria for expedited removal.

• Prevent gang members from receiving immigration benefits.

• Protect U.S. workers by requiring E-Verify and strengthening laws to stop employment discrimination against U.S. workers.

• Improve visa security by expanding State Department’s authority to combat visa fraud, ensuring funding of the Visa Security Program, and expanding it to high-risk posts.

MERIT-BASED IMMIGRATION SYSTEM: Establish reforms that protect American workers and promote financial success.

• End extended-family chain migration by limiting family-based green cards to include spouses and minor children.

• Establish a points-based system for green cards to protect U.S. workers and taxpayers.

Here in the Scribd format is the whole 70-item thing.

Administration Immigration Principles by Alex Pfeiffer on Scribd