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America can lick the Asian peril by training Mexican smarties
Stronger, faster and with papers
And ninthly We will add that the working class in the United States, because of its high standard of living, does not clearly see the contradictions existing in US society. To the US working class, these contradictions, which are blunted, appear incomprehensible and they cannot gain clear consciousness of their own exploitation as long as they continue to get the crumbs that US imperialism tosses to them from the feast - Ernesto Che Guevara
Despite liberals and Ryan Seacrest, America remains the greatest country on Earth. Like any paradise, however, we do have a couple of niggling problems - namely illegal immigrants and a lack of skilled engineers. Thankfully, I'm in the unique position to solve both of these issues - at the same time.
Out of pure humility, I've been holding back on the particular proposal at hand. I felt certain that someone else would come up with the idea sooner or later. It's lonely at the top, and it seemed better to share the glory for fixing America's social ills.
I can wait no longer.
Diving into the immigration crisis first, we find a prickly problem. The most common thesis around illegal Latin immigrants suggests that we desire their labor and want them here but can't admit out loud to having open borders. Americans have grown too fat and happy to serve water at restaurants, mow lawns or paint houses. So we let the Mexicans do it - to a point.
That's because just behind the veil of laziness we find the fear of unemployment. God forbid we let so many Mexicans in that they start taking classier jobs at cell centers, banks and - breathe deep - office buildings. The illegals can have the back-breaking labor, but they had better stay away from our coffee service and Friday doughnuts.
Frankly, I find the idea that we're too soft to perform an honest day's work repulsive. I used to slice pig fat on holidays and harvest corn with my teeth for kicks.
All that said, we're left with a scenario where we tolerate the immigrants that can sweat their way across the border, but we're not going to mail invitations to Mexico for help depleting our real, valuable workforce.
We actually find a weird variation on this scenario when examining the lack of engineering talent here weighed against the millions of engineers churned out by India and China.
Americans, it seems, have also grown too lazy to bother obtaining an electrical engineering or computer science degree.
How this surprises anyone is beyond me. You can float through four years of undergraduate classes sucking beer out of co-eds' navels, pick up your philosophy degree and then head to law school. Or, if you're one of those pathetic young Democrats, you can pretend to work hard at your politics classes, shoot a few rounds of golf for the school team and then whore yourself for millions in Washington. Less ambitious types can work hard enough in a grade inflation rich system to interest a Fortune 2000 company, flag down an MBA and then spend thirty or so years collecting a nice paycheck.
You'd have to be a real asshole to try and succeed in the difficult engineering and science classes, which will always be dominated by people much smarter than you. The reality of our fatness leaves America pumping out about 50,000 geeks a year. We choose to make matters worse by complaining about the jobs Indians and Chinese are stealing from us, when in reality, we're too drunk and sophisticated to do anything about the situation.
Now, here's the solution to both issues.
Let's have the likes of Wal-Mart and Dell keep pumping billions to the East. The Asian peril can focus on making us shoes, belts and TVs. Let's also have the likes of Microsoft, Intel, HP, IBM and Oracle transfer as many engineering jobs to India and China as they like. Flood the market. Make their smarties soft.
At the same time, let's require companies such as Wal-Mart and Dell to dedicate their manufacturing prowess to creating an empire of engineering and computer science academies in Mexico.
In the US, for example, Dell has forced North Carolina to create classes at community colleges to teach youngsters about servicing its PCs and servers. That's in exchange for Dell putting a factory in the state. Dell knows how to get these types of things done, and the time is right for the government to require Dell and others to take such a system to the next level in Mexico.
I want to see Wal-Mercado's Engineer Warehouses blanketing the Mexican countryside. I want to see thousands of workers putting down Tecates during their lunch break from the Dell House of Chip Design. Smarties everywhere!
And now the true brilliance of this plan emerges.
Will we let all of these engineers into the country once they've completed the courses? Hell no!
The Mexican engineers and computer scientists will have to slog it out and cross the border just like the busboys and gardeners. We'll end up with the hungriest, fittest and most creative workforce on the planet. Our Mexican smarties will put the Indian and Chinese weaklings to shame.
Best of all, if you make it across the border and pass a stringent computer science or engineering test, then you get your papers on the spot. It's a win, win situation.
I urge you all to write to your senators and congressmen backing my proposal. Tell them Otto sent you. Tell them you want to put the EE back in Meexican. ®
Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, developing strong Mexican engineers, masticating beta culture, following Jimmy Wales, nursing an opal-plated prostate, spanking open source fly boys, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest.