The founder of Starsky Robotics, Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, appeared on Fox Business recently and remarked, “We’ve been testing on Florida roads with people in the cab for [...]]]> Self-driving trucks have been in basic test mode for several years now — meaning a human is present behind the wheel — but now Florida moving toward full auto.

The founder of Starsky Robotics, Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, appeared on Fox Business recently and remarked, “We’ve been testing on Florida roads with people in the cab for couple of years. We’re now gearing up to take the person completely out of the cab on public roads in the state of Florida.”

Still, the Starsky boss says is is not ignorant of the job threat posed by self-driving vehicles, as he described in a June 11 interview:

Seltz-Axmacher explained to Freightwaves, “While others are trying to build fully autonomous trucks, we are building a truck that drives with no person in it and is remote-controlled for the first and last mile and that’s a completely different mindset. We are not eliminating drivers’ jobs. Instead, we are moving them from a truck to a safe and comfortable office where they utilize years of their long-haul trucking experience, but remain close to their families and go home between shifts.”

Perhaps. We’ll see how long that strategy lasts when other companies compete with cheaper hauling rates by deleting drivers entirely.

Below, a Daimler self-driving truck near Hoover dam in 2015.

I thought that trucking would go first for the intermediate strategy of platooning, where a driver pilots the lead truck with two or three vehicles following electronically. But Starsky is going for the big enchilada of full automation straight away. Perhaps they want the publicity of being first.

Keep in mind that driving is a major employment category for Americans. A 2015 Department of Commerce study said that one in nine US workers is employed as a driver:

So Washington won’t need to import any immigrants to work as drivers, since

Automation Makes Immigration Obsolete

Here’s a report from central Florida about the self-driving trucks:

Driverless big rigs could be hitting Florida highways next year. Are you ready, good buddy?, Orlando Sentinel, June 13, 2019

Driverless semi-trucks could be sharing Florida highways as early as next year, and there will be no requirement that surrounding motorists know it.

Nor will autonomous driving systems need to be tested, inspected, or certified before being deployed under a new state law that takes effect July 1.

10-4?

Starsky Robotics, a San Francisco-based startup company that’s been testing its driverless trucking technology in Florida and Texas, has put out a call for job applicants who one day want to pilot big rigs remotely.

Starsky envisions its remote drivers logging onto computers in an office environment to take the reins of its trucks during the first and last miles of their long hauls.

That means the trucks will be on autopilot for the vast majority of their highway journeys.
Driverless deployments should begin in Florida by the end of 2020, Starsky says.

That’s much sooner than 2027, the year consulting firm McKinsey & Company projects fully driverless trucks will be ready to hit the highway.

This brave new world is brought to you by a new state law authorizing driverless transportation networks to operate on public roads without the presence of human drivers in the vehicles.

On Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill enacting the law in a ceremony at SunTrax, the state’s new autonomous vehicle testing track in Auburndale.

While the law will also open the door for ride-sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft to deploy fleets for commuter use, DeSantis’ signing ceremony was staged in front of a Starsky-branded semi-truck. Starsky demonstrated its technology during the event, the company said.

Co-sponsored by Rep. Jason Fischer, a Duval County Republican, and Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, the new law replaces an existing one that required a human driver be present and able to take over driving chores in autonomous vehicles operating on public property for any other reason than testing.

Brandes, Fischer and other proponents of driverless vehicle technology say automated systems will make transportation safer by removing the potential for human error. Driverless technology proponents envision a day in the not-too-distant future in which most driving becomes automated, freeing commuters to stare into their smartphones or their dashboard video screens.

Safeguards in the new state law are limited.

Companies will be allowed to deploy their systems with no state inspection or certification.

“Companies [that] wish to operate in the state can do so as long as they are in compliance with any applicable federal regulations and the insurance requirements outlined in state law,” said Beth Frady, communications director for the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

Owners of autonomous commercial vehicles will be required to carry at least as much liability insurance as the state requires for commercial vehicles driven by humans. Currently, that means a minimum level of $300,000 in combined bodily liability and property damage coverage for trucks with a gross vehicle weight of 44,000 pounds or more, and lesser amounts for lighter vehicles.

Autonomous vehicles used for “on-demand” networks must be covered for at least $1 million for death, bodily injury and property damage, the law states.

Autonomous vehicles also will be required to achieve what’s called “minimal risk condition” — such as coming to a complete stop and activating their hazard lights — if their operating systems fail.

Existing traffic laws requiring drivers to promptly notify law enforcement agencies of crashes and then remain on scene to provide information or render aid will be exempted if law enforcement is notified by a vehicle’s owner or by the vehicle’s automated system.

After a Senate committee hearing in March to consider the new law, Sen. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa, prevailed in her push to require owners of autonomous vehicles to carry insurance and be held responsible when vehicles fail to operate as intended.

But she was unsuccessful in her call for a requirement for some sort of signal to passengers and surrounding motorists that the vehicle is operating in the autonomous mode. (Continues)

“It can’t simultaneously be true that robots will take all the jobs & that the [...]]]> Here’s some good news and some bad news in a Washington Post article. First, it’s heartening to learn that Senator Tom Cotton grasps the idea of automation reducing the need for immigrant workers, as tweeted and then reported.

“It can’t simultaneously be true that robots will take all the jobs & that the West needs millions of new immigrants to do the grunt work.” https://t.co/gRMEeWYqle

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) January 23, 2018

The bad news is the splatter-shot Post piece doesn’t explore serious projections of future job loss, but relies on shallow refutations by economists.

By “serious projections” I mean predictions from actual tech experts who know the subject and extrapolate accordingly. For example, consider actual forecasts from the tech world:

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.

Below, human workers have largely disappeared from many automotive factories.

A common ploy also used by the Post is to argue that the automated future will create new employment — “history suggests new jobs will replace old ones” — which is not exactly true: the explanation gets sketchy about how many new occupations will be forthcoming, how much training they might require or what the pay will be. It’s doubtful that businesses are investing great sums of money for automation and intend to keep the same number of employees: the whole point of investing in smart machines is to save money by reducing labor costs.

The Post article was reprinted by the Miami Herald, so click away:

We need fewer immigrants because robots are coming, GOP senator suggests, Miami Herald, By Heather Long (Washington Post), February 20, 2018

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., last week helped kill the bipartisan immigration deal in Congress. He didn’t think the bill went far enough in transforming the U.S. immigration system. Like President Donald Trump, Cotton thinks the United States should cut legal immigration. The senator’s reasoning?

Well, part of it seems to be that robots are coming for our jobs.

“It can’t simultaneously be true that robots will take all the jobs & that the West needs millions of new immigrants to do the grunt work,” tweeted Cotton in late January, quoting a Wall Street Journal op-ed from a conservative commentator.

The senator repeated that argument last week when a reporter at Vox asked him why he is so adamant about cutting legal immigration, a big shift from the GOP’s classical stance of accepting legal immigrants and fighting only illegal immigration.

“I think it’s certainly critical that we reduce unskilled and low-skilled workers. It can’t both be true … that we need both more unskilled and low-skilled workers, but robots are going to take all the jobs,” Cotton told Vox.

The connection between immigrants, robots and the labor market hasn’t been widely discussed. It’s an argument about the future. Typically, people who favor restricting immigration look to the past and present, arguing that immigrants have taken the jobs of low-skill Americans or depressed their wages. There is almost no evidence to support such a claim. In fact, unemployment in the U.S. is down to 4.1 percent, the lowest since 2000, and businesses say their top complaint is they can’t find enough workers for all the 5.8 million job openings that currently exist.

Almost every economist (on the left and right) says we need more immigration right now, not less, especially since America’s population is aging, meaning there will be even fewer native-born workers in the coming years.

“You’ve clearly got a serious demographic problem in the United States,” said Desmond Lachman, a fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “The number of people over 65 will double between now and 2060. That’s clearly a problem. You need younger people in the workforce to support a whole lot of older people.”

But what about the robots? Plenty of studies predict machines will disrupt entirely industries. Driverless cars and trucks, for example, could put 4 million Americans out of work in the “near future,” predicts the Center for Global Policy Solutions.

In this context, the robot argument sounds compelling. Do native-born Americans need to compete with immigrants for jobs that are going to be increasingly rare because of automation? On closer examination, it’s unlikely this is a real worry, several economists said.

Yes, machines will almost certainly take over some jobs but that doesn’t mean there will be fewer overall jobs in the U.S. economy.

[. . .]

“In the real world, the problem is we can’t find workers. That’s getting worse by the day. The problem isn’t robots taking over our jobs,” [Mark] Zandi said.

Even though U.S. businesses are desperately seeking workers, the Cotton proposal would reduce immigration an estimated 40 percent by 2038, according to an analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute.

Second, history suggests new jobs will replace old ones. As the Industrial Revolution demonstrated, technological transformations create new jobs no one has thought of yet. The same trend appears to be happening today.

Companies shed workers during the Great Recession and rapidly tried to cut costs, including by introducing more machines on assembly lines and in fast casual restaurants like Panera, where you can now order on a touch screen. Yet even with those trends, the U.S. economy has added over 16.4 million jobs since the low point for employment in December 2009.

“Tom Cotton is woefully misinformed,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. “Robots will create more jobs.”

(Continues)

Interestingly, the company came out with the major selling point of robots, that they are cheaper than human employees who want paychecks, lunch breaks and benefits. The Youtube channel is CGTN, aka China Global Television Network, which may [...]]]> A version of this video showed on a daytime news show in northern California on Monday:

Interestingly, the company came out with the major selling point of robots, that they are cheaper than human employees who want paychecks, lunch breaks and benefits. The Youtube channel is CGTN, aka China Global Television Network, which may not be as delicate in discussions of deleting workers.

The cost of the machine is $65,000 and it is estimated to have a lifespan of three years. That’s pretty cheap when you remember that the machine works 24/7 and presumably needs only the rare break for minor tune-ups and squirts of oil.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics noted in May 2016 that 1,103,120 persons were employed as security guards and the mean annual wage was $29,730. Has anyone told these workers they’re about to be phased out?

It should be mentioned that another robot security guard from the Knightscope company is already available and was seen working in San Francisco in 2016.

Given that security guard is a low-skilled job and requires just a basic knowledge of English, it is an occupation that attracts immigrants. But the rapidly automating workplace means that continuing to import over a million foreigners every year is a bad idea. Low-skilled jobs will be among the first to be eliminated over the next few years as automation really gets going in the workplace. Washington needs to wake up and smell the software.

The company building the Ramsee machine, Gamma 2 Robotics, emphasizes the cost savings on its front page:

The Future of Robotic Security is Here!

Imagine a deep technology that keeps people, property and businesses safer than ever. Imagine real time data being transmitted and used to help people make better decisions, on location or even remotely.

Introducing our new security patrol robot, RAMSEE, who will change the world of security because he never rests and he operates at a fraction of the cost normally paid for cameras, technology and guard services.

Below, McDonalds has begun to install ordering kiosks in [...]]]> Except for the really high class restaurants, low-skilled workers are adequate for the simple tasks required in food prep. As a result, automated replacements are coming on particularly strong in the food industry, particularly since some workers have been clamoring for $15/hour — bad timing there.

Below, McDonalds has begun to install ordering kiosks in its restaurants to save money on labor.

In a CNBC interview earlier this year, Yum Brands CEO Greg Creed predicted robots would replace fast food workers by the mid-2020s. That forecast lines up pretty well with another projection, that big changes from automation to the workplace will show up in beginning around five years.

So much of low-skilled food and restaurant work is about to disappear, and it therefore makes no sense to continue importing cheap-labor immigrants as if the workplace is the same as it ever was. It isn’t, and admitting many thousands of soon-to-be unemployed foreigners is not a good prescription for social tranquility in the future, when sorting out the automated economy will be stressful enough without additional diversity.

The following video is pretty good at giving a good picture on the evolution of machines as applied to food production and preparation, although the Zume Pizza woman is a little devious about how automation fits into the business plan:

Here’s the associated article from Wired:

When Robots Invade the Kitchen, Wired.com, November 25, 2017

BURGER FLIPPERS, PIZZA tossers, and latte frothers, watch your backs: Gordon, Sally, and Kona are coming for you. (And they never need to take a sick day.) Over the last few years, a growing army of efficient cost-cutting robots has arrived to automate a range of food prep tasks, from whipping up salads for the Palo Alto lunchtime rush to spicing late-night curry for hungry MIT coeds. They join the ranks of robo-cooks already popular in Asia; in China, there’s even a bot-staffed restaurant called Wall.E. Whether serving as sous chef in the kitchen or streamlining your takeout order, there is perhaps no better target for Silicon Valley’s appetite for disruption than the food industry.

Coffee Maker: Avoid barista side-eye by getting your coffee from a six-axis robotic arm named Gordon. Built by Mitsubishi, Gordon has been steaming and pouring espresso drinks in a glass-­enclosed San Francisco kiosk, Cafe X, since January. It’s like a java ATM, minus overdraft fees.

Greens Goddess: Launched by Redwood City, California, startup Chowbotics in April, Sally is an Automat-style box filled with 21 canisters of chopped ingredients. She can create over 1,000 salad combinations—presumably while pondering the gender politics of whoever decided to name a calorie-counting salad robot “Sally.”

Pizza Machine: At Zume Pizza in Silicon Valley, robots prep dough balls into thin-crust pies, dispense and spread the sauce, and transfer pizzas to and from 800-degree ovens. The pizzas are delivered in trucks outfitted with dozens of smart ovens to keep the pies hot. The secret sauce? Predictive analytics.

Dorm ’Droid: Leave it to a bunch of MIT students to upgrade their dining hall options by designing a fully automated mini­restaurant. At Spyce Kitchen, the robot chef needs less than five minutes to cook meals such as jambalaya or chickpea coconut curry. Nothing is served on a plastic tray.

Noodle Duo: Ninety-second ramen doesn’t have to come in a microwavable cup. Since 2015, twin robots Koya and Kona have been concocting made-to-­order bowls at Toyako, in Shanghai. The pair can boil water, cook noodles, ladle broth, and dole out veggies, meat, and eggs in less than two minutes.

Burgermeister: Robotics company Momentum Machines has built a fully autonomous beast capable of grilling 400 burgers an hour. Though Momentum has yet to open its first location (slated for San Francisco), expectations are high—and the buns are brioche.

As is often the case, the media doesn’t know how to handle the automation issue and the CBS pirce wanders all [...]]]> Robot bellhops were introduced to the public as a coming thing in 2014 when trials began. Now they and other automated technology are becoming normalized, as reported in a CBS Los Angeles TV segment.

As is often the case, the media doesn’t know how to handle the automation issue and the CBS pirce wanders all over the place. It begins thoughtfully by asking whether smart machines threaten human jobs in the future but then veers into a Jetsons clip and from there to existing businesses with robots in use. Questions of whether humans are being displaced are laughed off as managers emphasize the appealing novelty aspect of the bots. Finally, serious person Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, appears with a warning, “The way these technologies always begin is they begin as tools helping people do their jobs, but they eventually do evolve.”

A purpose-built hotel robot acts as a bellhop when it delivers desired items to the rooms of customers.

Service jobs in hotels and restaurants are popular among immigrants, particular in diverse locales, so the government should get serious about passing the RAISE Act to decrease immigration substantially, because many unskilled jobs will be disappearing under the automation onslaught.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts bellhops and baggage porters together, and the May 2016 number of persons employed in the category was put at 44,750. It’s not a huge number as jobs cohorts go, but alternative choices are shrinking for unskilled people because of immigration and automation.

Experts have described he automated future as they believe it will play out. 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. Forrester Research Inc. has a more optimistic view, that there will be a net job loss of 7 percent by 2025 from automation.

Does it make sense for Washington to continue importing immigrant workers when the workplace is changing fundamentally from automation? It makes no sense at all, but the government is pretending the problem doesn’t exist.

As Hotels, Restaurants Expand Use Of Service Robots, Are Jobs At Risk?, CBS Los Angeles, August 9, 2017

He’s a robot butler at the Residence Inn LAX on Century Boulevard, and his name is Wally.

“In this particular brand of Residence Inn, if you called down and you wanted something, you’d really have to come down and get it yourself,” Residence Inn LAX General Manager Tom Beedon told CBS2.

But employees can program the butler to deliver anything to a room that fits in Wally’s compartment, even fresh towels from housekeeping.

“You’re going to hear somebody check in that says, ‘Oh, this is the hotel with Wally the Robot, right?’ ” says Beedon.

And if you think a robot delivering hand towels to your hotel room seems cool, you should check out the Gen Korean BBQ restaurant in Montclair.

It’s here where a human server takes your order with a tablet, another human loads your food in the kitchen, and a robotic system of trays and tunnels delivers it all to your table.

“I don’t think anybody 10 or 15 years ago would have thought, ‘Hey I’ll be at a Korean barbecue house with a robot bringing food out to me,’ ” says Gen Korean BBQ VP David Ghim. . .

(Continues)

It [...]]]> The Big Lie of the Democrat Party is that it stands for the working American while also supporting open borders and unlimited immigration: both cannot be true because a surplus of labor always results in lowered wages. May Day is supposed to underline solidarity with worker rights and wages, but lately not so much.

It seems clear that to Democrats, the main lesson learned from the 2016 presidential election failure was that traditional Americans cannot be convinced of the virtues of liberalism, so a new people must be imported to gain their big-government votes. (Of course, it might have helped if Hillary had campaigned in the Rust Belt with a message of jobs for Americans rather than skipping Wisconsin altogether.) The D-Party now believes immigration is even more important to electoral success, so the issue has arguably become their #1 topic. It doesn’t seem like a winner of an issue to American voters, but the Dems’ analysis of 2016 has been an exercise in denial of the obvious.

Below, a number of Mexican flags can be seen in the Chicago May Day march. The holiday has largely morphed into a celebration of illegal immigration and open borders.

In one instance of May Day non-solidarity with citizen workers, the Chairman of the Democratic Party Tom Perez used the occasion to proclaim, No human being is illegal during a rally near the White House. With such an ideology, why do any US citizens belong to the D-Party when Democrats are happy to give away American jobs to foreigners??

Tucker Carlson took on the Democrat discrepancy following the May Day marches and rioting when he interviewed Steven Choi, a big immigration advocate. Choi’s pro-immigrant arguments are a little disingenuous: he talks up immigration as good for America but argues for amnesty for all illegals as if rewarding theft would be acceptable in a nation of laws. Of course, too many legal immigrant visas can crush American workers just as efficiently — remember the history of H-1b job destruction which has caused wage suppression of up to 5.1 percent according to a recent study.

Tucker Carlson argued specifically against the Democrats’ Big Lie of claiming to support both citizen workers and excessive immigration:

TUCKER CARLSON: International May Day protests got violent in Paris, but the French weren’t the only ones taking to the streets. Across the United States protesters march in opposition to the enforcement of American immigration laws. In the Bay Area, marchers demanded open borders, shouting “No ban, no raids, no walls, sanctuary for all.” Steve Choi is Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition; he took part in today’s protests and he joins us now. . .

I’m 47, so I’ve watched a lot of May Day protests. Imagine my surprise, watching an international workers’ day protest that was designed over a hundred years ago to highlight the concerns of workers — foremost among them of course wages — arguing on behalf of policies that would lower wages, and I thought, boy, global capitalism is pretty tricky: it got you guys to advocate on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce. How’d they do that?

STEVE CHOI: Tucker, it had nothing to do with that. I was with 5,000 people in Foley Square and hundreds of thousands all across the country, and we were there to make a statement about the shared values that we have as a country, and that is that immigrants are part of the solution. Immigrants have been making America great for centuries now: immigrants are workers, they’re business owners, they’re employers, they’re neighbors and families and friends. And so we want to join with hundreds of thousands people all across this country in peaceful protest to say, to make that statement that we are going to rise up and then we are going to fight back

CARLSON: Okay, I kind of agree with what you said. I’m for immigrants and they are all those things, and they’re great, but they’re also one of the reasons that the wages for American working class families have stayed stagnant or declined, because when you have an overabundance of something — in this case labor — its value falls. There’s no controversy about that. You’re advocating for that: you’re advocating in effect for lower wages for workers, and I just don’t know why.

The conversation continues, with Choi reciting pro-immigration statistics like additional economic activity that have nothing to do with wages. Tucker tried valiantly to make a dent with facts about the effects on Americans, but Choi wouldn’t budge from his smooth agitprop. But then why would mere facts succeed against a low-key invasion?

One element of the bill would effectively quadruple the number of H-2B foreign workers for blue-collar non-farm jobs that millions of Americans need. At a time when the labor force participation rate is only [...]]]> Do Republican Congressional leaders think nobody will notice the monstrosity that the Congress has created in the omnibus federal spending legislation?

One element of the bill would effectively quadruple the number of H-2B foreign workers for blue-collar non-farm jobs that millions of Americans need. At a time when the labor force participation rate is only 62.5 percent as of November, and over 94 million were not working, increasing the number of immigrant workers is a stab in the back to struggling Americans.

In addition, the Congress has funded a black check for Obama’s Muslim immigration project that will endanger America while it de-Christianizes the nation. Sessions notes in his press release that the omnibus “will ensure that at least 170,000 green card, refugee and asylum approvals are issued to migrants from Muslim countries over just the next 12 months.”

Meanwhile, Syrian immigration of various sorts has exceeded 100,000 since 2012.

Why do these Republicans think we will vote for them in 11 months?

Here’s Senator Sessions speaking on Wednesday, explaining why “voters are in open rebellion”:

Sessions: Omnibus Would Quadruple Controversial Foreign Worker Porgram, Expand Admissions of Refugees, Fund President’s ‘Entire Immigration Agenda’, December 16, 2015

“There is a reason that GOP voters are in open rebellion.  They have come to believe that their party’s elites are not only uninterested in defending their interests but – as with this legislation, and fast-tracking the President’s international trade pact – openly hostile to them.”

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, released a statement warning that the omnibus funding bill would, among other things, fund Sanctuary Cities, the President’s refugee expansion, and quadruple a controversial foreign worker program replacing Americans – all during a time of increasing concerns about threats to U.S. security and finances:

“The more than 2,000 page year-end funding bill contains a dramatic change to federal immigration law that would increase by as much as four-fold the number of low-wage foreign workers provided to employers under the controversial H-2B visa program, beyond what is currently allowed.  These foreign workers are brought in exclusively to fill blue collar non-farm jobs in hotels, restaurants, construction, truck driving, and many other occupations sought by millions of Americans.

At a time of record immigration – with a full 83% of the electorate wanting immigration frozen or reduced – the GOP-led Congress is about to deliver Obama a four-fold increase to one of the most controversial foreign worker programs.  The result?  Higher unemployment and lower wages for Americans.

As the Economic Policy Institute noted, ‘wages were stagnant or declining for workers in all of the top 15 H-2B occupations between 2004 and 2014,’ and ‘unemployment rates increased in all but one of the top 15 H-2B occupations between 2004 and 2014, and all 15 occupations averaged very high unemployment rates…Flat and declining wages coupled with such high unemployment rates over such a long period of time suggest a loose labor market—an over-supply of workers rather than an under-supply.’

The voters put Republicans in a majority in the 2014 midterm elections – a vote which constituted a clear decision to reject the abuse of our immigration system.

That loyalty has been repaid with betrayal.

On top of this provision, the omnibus approves – without conditions – the President’s request for increased refugee admissions, allowing him to bring in as many refugees as he wants, from anywhere he wants, and then allow them to access unlimited amounts of welfare and entitlements at taxpayer expense.  This will ensure that at least 170,000 green card, refugee and asylum approvals are issued to migrants from Muslim countries over just the next 12 months.

In March, as Charmain of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, I sent appropriators a list of several dozen provisions for inclusion in our funding bills to improve immigration enforcement and block presidential lawlessness; those provisions were rejected – yet industry’s request for more foreign workers, and the President’s request for refugee funds, were unconditionally approved.

The bill also funds sanctuary cities and illegal alien resettlement, allows the President to continue issuing visas to countries that refuse to repatriate violent criminal aliens, and funds the President’s ongoing lawless immigration actions – including his unimpeded 2012 executive amnesty for alien youth.

As feared, the effect is to fund the President’s entire immigration agenda.

There is a reason that GOP voters are in open rebellion.  They have come to believe that their party’s elites are not only uninterested in defending their interests but – as with this legislation, and fast-tracking the President’s international trade pact – openly hostile to them.

This legislation represents a further disenfranchisement of the American voter.”

BACKGROUND:

Click here, here, and here to read more about the unprecedented level of immigration into the U.S., its fiscal impacts, and voters’ desire to see it reduced.  Click here to read more about the H-2B increase, which revives an effort from the rejected Gang of Eight bill.

Amazon’s highly automated warehouses have thousands of Kiva robots moving racks of merchandise around to human box packers — for now. The company is working to develop [...]]]> One of the toughest skills for automation engineers to crack is the amazing human hand with its unique dexterity — but it’s not for lack of trying.

Amazon’s highly automated warehouses have thousands of Kiva robots moving racks of merchandise around to human box packers — for now. The company is working to develop a machine that can discern, grasp and pack objects through its yearly Amazon Picking Challenge, a contest for robot designers to create the the next major step in human worker replacement.

Meanwhile, sewing presents a similar problem because clothing construction is almost completely based on manual dexterity, where the process requires handling fabrics that can vary tremendously in terms of stability, stretch, slipperiness, thickness and other qualities.

But now the brainiac engineers say they are getting close to a workable SewBot.

Add sewing to the growing list of jobs that won’t need imported immigrant workers to perform because smart machines will fill them in the future. As the following article points out, “in coming decades the gains [in automation] could add up to a significant reduction in the need for human workers in many fields.”

Another quote that should be getting attention: “By 2030, 90% of jobs as we know them today will be replaced by smart machines,” according to a 2013 report from a Gartner tech analyst.

Why isn’t automation being discussed by any of the gaggle of Presidential candidates? The workplace is being fundamentally transformed, while Washington acts as if nothing has changed and the jobless recovery is an unexplainable curiosity.

Robots Take On More-Elaborate Tasks Amid Worker Shortage, Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2015

Automation gains could reduce need for human workers in many fields

ATLANTA—In a former kitchen-cabinet workshop here, a dozen engineers are creating robots to sew garments and rugs—tasks usually relegated to low-wage workers in distant countries.

SoftWear Automation Inc., the startup that employs the engineers, promises to transform the apparel industry, automating production so goods can be made in factories anywhere by robots and small teams of people tending them.

So far, the robots can do only basic tasks, like sewing around button holes or the edges of fluffy bath rugs. They can’t do other things people are good at, such as holding together two floppy pieces of material while sewing them into a shirt. SoftWear’s SewBots can’t produce a finished garment, though the firm hopes to reach that stage next year.

The garment industry is interested in the technology, but “people are going to start small with us,” says K.P. Reddy, SoftWear’s CEO. “It’s going to be incremental.”

The same can be said for many potential applications of robots, 3-D printers and other forms of automation, ranging from the assembly of myriad consumer goods to caring for the elderly. Though progress has been incremental so far, in coming decades the gains could add up to a significant reduction in the need for human workers in many fields.

“By 2030, 90% of jobs as we know them today will be replaced by smart machines,” three analysts from the research firm Gartner Inc. wrote in a 2013 report. They defined smart machines as ones doing things previously thought doable only by people, such as learning from experience. Machines, they said, “are evolving from automating basic tasks to becoming advanced self-learning systems mimicking the human brain.”

By 2050, such machines are likely to “do every job that we presently do,” says Vivek Wadhwa, a fellow at Stanford University and frequent writer on technological trends. “The more I look forward, the more convinced I am that jobs won’t be about sustenance any more. Since everything will be so cheap, our jobs will be about knowledge and the arts. This is what will keep us busy.”

The most common tasks for industrial robots today include heavy lifting, welding and applying glue, paint and other coatings. Robots can lift heavier weights than people and are far more precise. Unlike people, they can be relied on to do exactly what they are told. They also can work around the clock.

Robots still can’t match people in versatility, common sense or improvisation, however.

To demonstrate robots’ shortcomings, Rodney Brooks, chairman of Rethink Robotics Inc. and a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thrusts a hand into his front pocket and pulls out his keys. That task requires far more dexterity than today’s robots can muster.

“Our hands are exquisite mechanisms,” Dr. Brooks said. “We’re at least a decade, perhaps two decades, from having robots with dexterity” anywhere near human levels.

Given the technological limitations, an increasingly popular approach is to make collaborative robots that work alongside people. The robots do the parts of a task requiring strength and precision, while people supply finesse in fitting things together and common sense in solving unforeseen problems.

Robots are becoming smaller and lighter, so they can be moved from one task to another. They also are becoming easier to program as developers come up with intuitive methods for teaching them new tasks.

The global boom in such products as smartphones and electronic-game consoles has reduced the cost of robot parts such as sensors, cameras and chips capable of processing vast amounts of information, says Larry Sweet, a robotics professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He adds that advances in voice recognition, of the sort used by the Siri app on Apple Inc.’s iPhones, mean people eventually will be able to tell robots what to do rather than pushing buttons.

Robots also have the potential to learn on their own. Rather than merely following coded instructions written by people, they will increasingly teach themselves skills by looking on the Internet for cues on how particular problems have been solved before, Gill Pratt,a former program manager at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, wrote recently. If a robot remains stumped after such a search, it might seek help from a human.

Japan’s Fanuc Corp. already sells what it calls a “learning robot,” capable of using trial and error to determine the most effective way to complete a series of welding tasks.

Robots aren’t the whole story, of course. Advances in 3-D printing should allow more products to be made with less human toil. Meanwhile, the convergence of big data and powerful mobile computing means that various devices can help people learn skills and do work more efficiently, so fewer humans are needed.

Mahadev Satyanarayanan, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is working with colleagues on what he calls “wearable cognitive assistance.” He believes workers eventually will be able to wear Google glasses or similar devices that will be like “an angel sitting on your shoulder and whispering helpful hints.” The angel might tell a trainee short-order cook that an omelet is about to burn, he says, or help a newbie factory worker fix a machine.

In Atlanta, SoftWear is taking on one of the trickiest automation challenges. The garment industry has long been a laggard in automation investments, partly because profit margins are low and plenty of cheap labor was available. Now garment makers may be more inclined to invest as the supply of cheap labor shrinks and retailers increasingly want quick shipments that don’t need to cross an ocean.

One problem is that robots typically deal with rigid materials, such as metals or plastics. Cloth is harder to handle because it puckers or otherwise changes shape when moved. People manage that through touch and feel, smoothing cloth as they feed it into a sewing machine.

SoftWear’s robots use cameras to tell where the cloth is and arms with vacuums to move it where it needs to be. The company, begun as a research project at Georgia Tech, has so far delivered just two machines, to a large home-textiles company it won’t identify. But Mr. Reddy, the CEO, said he expects to ship 75 to 100 robots next year.