Re: Brenda Walker's blog posts Automation: AI-enhanced Smart Machines and Software Will Endanger White-Collar Jobs  and Automation: Smart Warehouse Robots Will Eventually Replace Most Human Workers

From: A West Texas Reader [Email him]

While reviewing several fine Brenda Walker articles on automation debunking the immigration-zealots' tired cliché claims that "we need immigrants to fill jobs," I also ran across a huge paradigm shift in software development, "Low-Code Tech."

Employers have been cutting operating costs every conceivable way. One way to cut costs is "Low-Code Tech." Low-Code Tech has been around a while but the new, advanced versions are recently enjoying a surge in implementation. Here is one example: Oil Major ConocoPhillips Deploys Low-Code Tech to Boost Bottom Line, by Julia Payne, Reuters, June 30, 2020.

That technology "allows companies to create in-house systems without hiring outside developers as minimal or no coding knowledge is required."

Also: “On average, a low-code platform takes up just 10%-20% of the cost and time you would take to develop a solution from scratch.”

Wow.

Software that, with modest input from the end users, develops software.

All the tech giants have similar Low-Code Tech products on the market—Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others.

Learn to code, indeed.

Without question we do not need to import tens of thousands of cheap-labor mediocre immigrant programmers through H-1B visas. Or through any of the other numerous visa programs that have sprouted and multiplied like weeds choking a neglected garden. Just call them all "cheap-labor visas."

We already have seen robots that repair other robots, and so on.

Now yet another way that automation will cause a net job loss over the next decade. Both white collar  and blue collar jobs are being automated out of existence.

The net job loss that is already underway has an obvious implication to public policy: The correct number of immigrants is zero.

Immigration is just another public policy, no more sacred than, say, billboard zoning codes, bingo hall regulations, or the closing time for bars.

In this case, it's closing time, the cheap-labor party's over.

See earlier letters from the same reader.