Steve Sailer did a piece two years ago called Japanese Substitute Inventiveness for Immigration; NYT Shocked in which he talked about the robots that Japan was developing to help care for the elderly. Here’s a progress report in the news, forwarded by a loyal reader:

TOKYO (AFP) - A Japanese-led research team said it had made a seeing, hearing and smelling robot that can carry human beings and is aimed at helping care for the country’s growing number of elderly.

Government-backed research institute Riken said the 158-centimeter (five-foot) RI-MAN humanoid can already carry a doll weighing 12 kilograms (26 pounds) and could be capable of bearing 70 kilograms within five years.
Aging Japan builds robot to look after elderly - Yahoo! News

When I saw this fellow here on the left, I was reminded of some famous science fiction robots, including the famous Frank Kelly Freas sad robot, from Astounding Science Fiction, in 1953, which was used as an album cover by Queen. This robot appears to be saying “Oops” because the man he’s picked up has proved excessively fragile.

This is not an encouraging thought, if robots are going to take care of me in my old age. Then there was Joe, Henry Kuttner’s “Proud Robot.” (Click to see Joe admiring himself in the mirror. ) Joe was designed by an inventor liked to drink, which means that he woke up one morning and found a robot that he couldn’t remember building, and that he didn’t know what it was supposed to do.

But we have a lot of articles on Vdare.com for mechanical solutions to problems that are being solved today with cheap labor, here’s a laundry list (laundry, there’s another thing that used to require immigrant labor, but is now a machine in your basement):

• Technology and organization are substitutes for labor. That’s why, here in the foothills of the Berkshires, we’ve just been plowed out of a New England snowstorm by one sixtyish man with a pickup truck, rather than dug out by fifty Mexicans with shovels. [Peter Brimelow]

• Mowing Alone? Technology Works on Grass as Well as Snow, by yours truly. Here’s the latest on the Robot Lawnmower.
• Now, a combine rolls into a field. In a matter of hours, one or two workers harvest and store the grain. Labor is reduced at least tenfold.
  Give us this day, by Harold Brewer
• In 1979, President Carter’s Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland ended government financing of research into farming technology because he didn’t want to replace “an adequate and willing work force with machines.” That was just about the time we started hearing about how Americans wouldn’t take those jobs anyway.

  The “adequate and willing work force” Mr. Bergland was talking about was made up of immigrants. [Sam Francis, in an article featuring the mechaniezed canopy shakers which may replace immigrant workers in Florida. They're big, scary machines. But the workers are kind of scary, too.]

• myRobot—Our Easter Bunny [Steve Sailer on the Roomba.]

So I was watching CSPAN2 today and there was a panel of speakers discussing immigration reform…it appeared to be some kind of Congressional thing but who knows.

Included on the panel were Congressman Reyes (D-TX) email, Congressman Kolbe (R-AZ) email, Jorge Ramos of Univision, Hector Flores of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) email, the Mexican Ambassador to the United States Carlos de Icaza and CNN’s Lou Dobbs.

Hmm…let’s see: That’s 5 in favor of condoning illegal immigration and 1 opposed.

In any event, I got so frustrated with the discussion that I called Peter Brimelow to beg him to debate Jorge Ramos at some point. Truth be told, it would be virtually impossible to follow the debate for the unusually strong accents on both sides but it would be funny!

(When Jorge Ramos says “undocumented immigrant” it sounds like un dah coo men ted…it’s cute but confusing.)

The transcripts are not yet available but Dobbs posed this question (paraphrased) to Ramos, Flores and the Ambassador:

There are roughly 5 billion people in the World more impoverished than the average Mexican national. Should our immigration policy favor Mexicans over everybody else as it does now? Do you think that’s fair?

None of them would answer the question…they started blithering on about sharing a border and the fact that many of our cities have “Hispanic” names: Los Angeles, Las Vegas etc…

Lou Dobbs–quite politely–interrupted the response and asked them to answer his question.

They still avoided the question and Dobbs interrupted by saying (again, I am paraphrasing in lieu of available transcripts):

Look around us–why don’t we have any Asians here today? Africans? Anybody else for that matter? Why are only the interests of Mexico represented today?

I never heard an answer…

Lou Dobbs did a magnificent job today and I hope people tell him that! [email him]

If you do happen to drop him a line, could you please mention that Bryanna Bevens at VDARE.com would very much like to be President of his Fan Club…or if not, maybe a lackey to fetch his coffee.

Bruce Bartlett is the economist who lost his job with the National Center for Policy Analysis for writing Impostor, a book bashing Bush from the conservative side. One thing he said in his syndicated column at the time of the Miers nomination was this:

It is the rare conservative who has a kind word for the Bush immigration policy. Most conservatives think that he has been woefully weak on protecting our borders. Among the grassroots of the Republican Party, there is active hostility to administration plans to allow illegal immigrants to have guest-worker status. Most see this as a form of amnesty that will further encourage illegal immigration.

Recently he was grilled by Open Borders true believers Paul Gigot and Stephen Moore on the WSJ Editorial report:

Moore: Even Ronald Reagan made mistakes. He had Bitburg and other problems. I think one other thing I’d like to just mention that, I think, is wrong in your book. When you talk about Bush deviating away from the Reagan legacy. Bush has been very strong on immigration. He’s been pro immigration. He wants to keep the golden gates open. And you attack Bush, in your book, for basically trying to keep up the Reagan legacy in the Republican Party being a pro immigration party.

Bartlett: Well I–you make it seem like I wrote a lot about that issue and there was really about one paragraph, I think. And I am conflicted on that issue. I’d like to be more libertarian on that subject, but I’m just very concerned about, we’ve passed a tipping point. There was just too much. And I don’t think we have a strategy for dealing with it. But I do think that also–

Moore: But that’s your opinion. How can you blame Bush for being anti-Reagan when, in fact, you’re the one who’s not for Ronald Reagan’s–

Bartlett: Well, look, you know, I didn’t say he was 100% against Reagan. But, I mean, by and large, I think, if you look at Ronald Reagan’s philosophy as being the cornerstone of what Republicans believe in, I think he’s done more to go against it than to go towards it. And that’s really the gist of my argument.

It’s an article of faith with the WSJ’s Church of the Open Border that Ronald Reagan would have supported the present wave of mass immigration, including the illegal immigration. I doubt it, myself. Reagan was a patriot.

Saint Patrick’s Day is approaching (an occasion for amateurs, as we say at my favorite drinking establishment), so the media is cranking out the requisite annual mention of the Irish and all their important contributions to America.

Interestingly, there is a sizeable contingent of illegal Irish lurking about, as the San Francisco Chronicle noted today [Irish join battle over illegal immigration].

“They are in as dire straits as any other ethnic group,” said Kennelly, who estimates there are 3,000 to 4,000 Irish illegal immigrants in San Francisco, most working in construction, in restaurants or as nannies and caretakers for the elderly. “They cannot get driver’s licenses, it’s harder to open bank accounts, they cannot travel home and return again. … The relationship between Ireland and America is so long and fantastic, but it’s in danger now.”

So, if Washington doesn’t legalize all the illegal Irish here, they will be really miffed?

An Irish blog dedicated to the plight of the illegal alien Irish is filled with the sense of entitlement, like America is their spare country:

• Breda: “We are living under unnecessary duress and it is not fair. We are good, honest, hard-working, creative, funny people and we deserve better.”

• Susanne: “There are thousands of Irish immigrants in this same tragic situation and we’re staying here, waiting and hoping for the McCain/Kennedy bill. It really is the only light at the end of this dark tunnel.”

Irish consider their case to be special because of Ireland’s history of immigration to America. Mexicans feel entitled because they believe the Southwest belongs to them. They and other Hispanics are taught by the Catholic Church that they are like Joseph and Mary, and that their suffering cancels out American borders. Everyone figures their circumstance makes them special. And so it goes.

But I am grateful to the Irish for their fine contribution to the whiskey part of Western civilization. Here’s to borders!