Th authorities are very vague in their statements, on purpose.
According to the article, 450 were arrested, over 300 are South Korean, but the article makes it impossible to tell who entered illegally, and who had incorrect visas or expired ones, and their various nationalities.
What is clear is that this has escalated to a diplomatic crisis at the highest levels on the Korean side. Definitely bodes well for future interest in investing in advanced manufacturing in the US.
It seems to me Hyundai is at fault here, or they just outright organized this.
Koreans can come to US without visa, but that visa doesn’t allow you to work. That means no hands on work at the site. Considering the raids happening at the factory itself, I would really be surprised if they are only there to receive training by their US counterparts, which seems pretty unlikely.
As immigrants, our visa status has been tracked by day one, and constantly validated. It boggles my mind why Hyundai didn’t just pay to apply for H2B visa, to invite those workers to come here legally. Yeah it takes time and money but it is the correct thing to do
Yes, they all lacked work visas. Allegedly Hyundai subcontracted out the work to third parties who didn't bother to get work visas for their employees.
Maybe Korean companies are used to getting away with that kind of thing? Seems fairly short sighted given the current focus on immigration.
I don’t doubt that some Americans are deported each year from South Korea but I was unable to find any examples in the news other than this one in 2017. I wonder how regular it really is, or maybe it doesn’t get reported by any news source?
I mean, I understand public humiliation is something Usians like, but was it necessary here? To me, punishing the workers is so unimaginably cruel and pointless...
Assuming that they are in illegally, the U.S. is the party that should be upset. If you are going to do business in the U.S. then you need to follow us laws.
You can say you're (rightfully) upset, without throwing employees of a major investor onto a jail without functioning toilets.
The problem is that the US is sending deeply conflicting messages. Does it want Hyundai's investment or not? It's not that Hyundai needs to build a factory in the middle of nowhere in Georgia.
It wants Hyundai's investment and it wants to create American jobs and also have Hyundai follow the laws. The extremity of the right is fueled by an apparently prevalent reluctance to enforce any rules.
It sounds weirdly like you’re saying that one of the conditions of Hyundai doing business in the US is that we turn a blind eye to them breaking our labor laws, but I’m sure you couldn’t really mean that.
The meaning of the comment of the person you're replying to doesn't significantly change if you replace "employees of" to "contractors of". You're picking at nits.
> It's not that Hyundai needs to build a factory in the middle of nowhere in Georgia.
Then why is it doing so? I'm lost.
Are you implying that it's an act of charity towards the US with zero expectation of or potential for profit? Then why doesn't Hyundai just save the management trouble and donate to a charity?
But if you take things at face value, this isn’t a case where ICE is going berserker mode. They went through investigation and obtained search warrants.
Regardless how they handle detention, the only conclusion is to send them back. Thankfully it seems swift so the workers won’t endure long uncertainty.
Last but not least. One of the arguments of said investment, is to boost local employment, in exchange of other benefits, mostly tax reduction. It is a two way door
> 5:10 "475 were illegally present in the United States"
Not quite; The figure includes those with visa.
"Illegally present in the United States or in violation of their presence in the united states, working unlawfully"
This also leaves open the question of what "violation of the visa" entails here. They may well have been working within their visas, only for ICE to arbitrarily rule otherwise.
It gets a little confusing because ESTA(which South Koreans are eligible for) is valid for both tourist and business use, and is a visa waiver.
As this comment[1] states with an official source:
> A B-1 visa may be granted to specialized workers going to the United States to install, service, or repair commercial or industrial equipment or machinery purchased from a company outside of the United States, or to train U.S. workers to perform such services.
Maybe the business use of ESTA also covers the above use cases?
I agree, it's probably the law (not just in the US, but most places). But, IME, it's almost universally ignored, and has to be.
I've never worked in fab/manufacturing, but I assume if you buy a bunch of gear from ASML (100s of millions of $), they are going to send a team out to help set it up and get it working for you. How else could that work? Some story for advanced batteries.
And a similar story for large (multi-national) tech/software companies. People need to travel back and forth between sites. Getting "work" visas for these short visits would be impractical.
Why are you happy to see a crack down? How do you think this should work?
There is nothing impractical about getting a business visa, in fact it's the same process as getting a tourist visa and some consulates issue just a generic B-1/2 visa, which can be either, depending on the purpose of your visit. And these visas are usually multi-entry, so you don't need to get one for every visit. Same for visa waiver - it can be used for either business or tourism, you just need to declare the purpose.
The problem in the topical case, is likely, that it was not a short visit but people being employed in the US illegally.
The solution is to hire and train people inside the country. To build the knowledge base and skills within the country.
I totally understand that it is universally abused. I’ve seen it abused in white collar work. Companies need to adjust economically and plan their budgets accordingly.
Honestly, in many parts of the country there is no hope, no jobs, and just drugs. It’s time to invest in the U.S. citizen again.
I’m happy there is a crackdown because I have seen U.S. jobs lost due to this behavior. It’s actually the only reason I voted for trump.
In terms of very long term policy, you could try to train people to be able to do this. But, for advanced industrial processes (eg batteries) the way to do that is to establish a bunch of production lines. And that will NEVER happen in the US today without bringing in overseas experts to spend months starting them up.
There is no practical visa to get. If they had to follow the letter of the law there would be no plant. They are not competing against US workers, there are no US workers to do the job.
And, FWIW, when I worked for big multi-national tech firms, it was the same thing having people from the EU offices visit. They were not doing jobs that Americans could do. We already hired all the Americans we could, and these people worked 50 weeks a year in the EU.
There are plenty of diverse visas available. Arguing that specific visa is not available and therefore you do not have to follow the law is not an argument I can follow. In my mind that is tantamount to fraud.
America is a very large country and I’m sure if you paid enough, and took the time to train the workers you can find people to do the work. If you have planned your budget and timeline around not taking this path then it seems unethical to me.
I’ve witnessed tech jobs done where there are plenty of capable people in the us available to do the work. They just cannot afford to post us wages and train the workers in the us.
I completely understand that some projects are different, and you need a specific skillset. But if you are going to do work on us soil you have to follow the law.
And I've interviewed many many hundreds of people for jobs at big tech companies, and there is no easy source of US people to fill these jobs. The non-US people brought over to fill them, and the people hired in overseas offices were dramatically better qualified than the US people we declined to hire.
I've also experienced this, and I completely agree. The reality is that you have to pay a very high salary in the US if you want someone to do a very good job. You probably have to recruit from the top universities, or the top candidate from other universities. Also, for a fraction of a US salary you can hire the very best bands in other countries, which is obviously a logical decision for any company to make.
That does not, however, excuse anyone from following the law.
I could be wrong, but the intent of the law is to encourage companies to train candidates to make them ready for the job. If you are just bringing in workers from other countries to work on us soil, even though there are us workers that can you do the job, in my mind you are essentially circumventing the intent of the law. This weakens the country for everyone.
Part of the problem right now with regards to skills is that there is essentially a threshold that has been crossed for outsourcing where the skills are just more prevalent in other countries. That's obviously not a great look for the United States.
Is it really that weird that a company would speak from both sides of their mouth ? That is essentially what corporate speak is.
That should be the assumed default when a major company says anything.
Just walked past this building in person the other day. I had to a triple take when I saw the base. It seems very unintuitive that it could stand safely.
It seems both backwards and perfectly sensible that the country with the biggest debts is also the country with the biggest stick. It’s backwards because it seems counterintuitive to any mafia-style arrangement where the guy with the big stick is collecting the money. But it’s sensible because the safest debtor is one that won’t default, and why would the country with the biggest stick ever want to default?
It’s almost like some twisted version of Mutually Assured Destruction mixed with economics and realpolitik. As long as you don’t try to collect your money, it’s safe and profitable to lend me more of it. Because of the implication…
my understanding is that yes it is, you cant make shoes in the US, but the power that comes from pretty much all finance flowing through the American pipes is a good trade off.
The USD as the world's reserve currency means, effectively, that other nations are lending the US money at the very low interest rates that Treasuries yield. Effectively, the US gets the best and biggest line of credit in the world, with which it had (until now) financed the most incredible expansion of industrial, financial and academic prowess the world has ever seen.
it also allows USA to export inflation to the entire world. Whole world will be experiencing inflation, thus, diluting the effect it has on the US population
You can get US made shoes, but they’re expensive. Made in USA New Balance pairs run $200, Red Wing boots are $350+, and Alden shoes and boots start at $700 and go up to $1,000.
Red wings and Rancourt & Company, here, plus Mexican and Spanish manufacturers (most search engines are terrible at surfacing these, you need to specify the country to find them) when I can’t find what I want in my price bracket in the US. Alden’s a bit rich for my blood.
Frankly, sneaker prices are getting so damn high that for the last couple years “expensive” leather shoes and boots from manufacturers that have resisted big price hikes have been looking more and more like a bargain…
> Frankly, sneaker prices are getting so damn high that for the last couple years “expensive” leather shoes and boots from manufacturers that have resisted big price hikes have been looking more and more like a bargain…
Red Wing in particular has only raised prices about 10% in the past 10 years.
how come immigrants from Haiti/other 3rd world countries come to the poorest rural towns in USA and make it work, while US citizens drown in drugs and crime?
The opportunity is there, its just USA was supposed to use the reserve currency status to invest domestically in its own people. Instead USA made a business out of education (private schools and elite colleges).
This creates a situation where only high value jobs are feasible in the USA, but the education to do these high value jobs is too expensive. Now you have to import foreign talent, as well as goods, and this leads to erosion of the country.
China on the other hand, invested in its own people and developed industries domestically, rather than importing talent
It sounds like you're arguing we should invest more in the population's education? I'd agree with that.
> how come immigrants from Haiti/other 3rd world countries come to the poorest rural towns in USA and make it work, while US citizens drown in drugs and crime?
Any source(s) on this? First I'm hearing of this correlation.
That's mixing up dominance with high value. In theory there could be a world with a lower value dollar that's still stable and used for international trade.
