Whether the system "works" or "doesn't work" is dependent on what the machine was designed to do, which is not an objective physical fact about the machine. Perhaps the machine was not meant to open the door when an object is detected, but to close it instead, or to do something else entirely; only the designer would be able to tell you one way or the other.
The same is true for all computation, and that is Searle's point.
> A computer (the theoretical model) is, be definition, something that can perform coherent reasoning without any special internal state.
Computers don't actually engage in reasoning, though, for the same reason. A machine is just a physical process, and physical processes do not have determinate semantic content.
Ross and Feser then argue that because thoughts do have determinate semantic content, they are necessarily immaterial, and I think they are correct.
(This argument is unrelated to qualia; I don't think qualia are fundamental to reason itself.)