GPS locates water, offers poetry for illegal immigrants crossing desert

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 12/29/9 | Aileen Yoo

[SmithL]

The immigration debate takes a technological turn with a new cell phone device that helps illegal immigrants crossing the desert into the U.S. find water. The Transborder Immigrant Tool was developed by UC San Diego prof and activist Ricardo Dominguez and UCSD lecturer Brett Stalbaum. Both believe it will save the lives of hundreds of people who die each year during their trek across "Devil's Highway."

Here's how the tool works. The phone, loaded with free GPS software, displays a digital compass that locates water stations installed by John Hunter, founder of the Water Stations project. Stations that are too far will not be displayed. The phone pinpoints "safety sites" -- such as Border Patrol station, a clinic or a church -- and includes poetry written by Amy Carroll to "welcome you to the U.S," said Dominguez. Encrypted to avoid detection by authorities, phones are $30 and should be available by summer.

[Slings and Arrows]

If the poetry is bad enough, they’ll wish they’d never came.

[Ladysmith]

Three words: WTF?

[SwinneySwitch]

Ping!

[Cyman]

“Transborder Immigrant Tool was developed by UC San Diego prof and activist Ricardo Dominguez and UCSD lecturer Brett Stalbaum”

So when the inevitable newness and self-congratulatory pats on the back fade and these water stations are not restocked as done previously, can these same “humanitarians” be charged with criminal depraved indifference as scores of immigrants die in the 120 degree heat of summer looking, hoping for that PROMISED igloo cooler of water?