GPS cell phone app directs illegal border crossers to water
Researchers at the University of California-San Diego develop GPS-based cell phone application aiming to help illegal immigrants by directing them to prepositioned water bins in the desert; critics say this amounts to aiding law-breaking, while supporters argue this is the humane thing to do
Here is a novel approach to illegal immigration: A group of California artists wants Mexicans and Central Americans to have more than just a few cans of tuna and a jug of water for their illegal trek through the harsh desert into the United States.
USA Today reports that faculty at University of California, San Diego are developing a GPS-enabled cell phone that tells dehydrated migrants where to find water and pipes in poetry from phone speakers, regaling them on their journey much like Emma Lazarus’s words did a century ago to the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” on Ellis Island.
The Transborder Immigrant Tool is part technology endeavor, part art project. It introduces a high-tech twist to an old debate about how far activists can go to prevent migrants from dying on the border without breaking the law.
Anti-immigration hardliners argue the activists are aiding illegal entry to the United States, a felony. Even migrants and their sympathizers question whether the device will make the treacherous journeys easier.
The designers — three visual artists on UCSD’s faculty and an English professor at the University of Michigan — are undeterred as they criticize a U.S. policy they say embraces illegal immigrants for cheap labor while letting them die crossing the border. “It’s about giving water to somebody who’s dying in the desert of dehydration,” said Micha Cardenas, 32, a UCSD lecturer.
The effort is being done on the government’s dime — an irony not lost on the designers whose salaries are paid by the state of California. “There are many, many areas in which every American would say I don’t like the way my tax dollars are being spent. Our answer to that is an in-your-face, so what?” says UCSD lecturer Brett Stalbaum, 33, a self-described news junkie who likens his role to chief technology officer.
Migrants walk for days in extreme heat, often eating tuna and crackers handed out at migrant shelters in Mexico. On Arizona ranches, they sip desperately from bins used by cows when their water runs out. Hundreds have perished each year since heightened U.S. border enforcement pushed migrants out of large cities like San Diego and El Paso, Texas, in the 1990s. In response, migrant sympathizers put jugs or even barrels of water in the desert.
The designers want to load inexpensive phones with GPS software that takes signals from satellite, independent of phone networks. Pressing a menu button displays water
