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One thing missing from the public debate and I havent seen any writers I follow bring up: When US companies first started outsourcing their factories to Korea,
by neither_color 1y ago
One thing missing from the public debate and I havent seen any writers I follow bring up:
When US companies first started outsourcing their factories to Korea, China, and other countries, they were doing the exact same thing. They were just flying engineers over on business and tourist visas to jump start factories and train the workers. Typically only long term workers bothered getting bona fide employee visas abroad.
Open any Steve Jobs biography. "Jobs told me to fly to China tonight and deal with the problem"
You think he got a Chinese work visa in one day?
This is hubris-driven rule by law. As Americans we can't fathom a foreign company knowing something we don't. The shoe is on the other foot now. Foreign conglomerates have knowledge and processes and expertise that we dont have. There's literally no pragmatic way for Hyundai to get 300 employees here on short notice. They moved fast and broke things. They did what they thought they had to do to survive in a kafkaesque system.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago[flagged]
- neither_color 1y agoWho said anything about excusing crime? At least dozens of valid visa holders were caught in the dragnet, some appear to have been in a gray area as to what they were allowed to do(the "strawman" in question), and some were truly sub-sub contracted illegals. The latter could have been apprehended without all the spectacle, and the grey area could've been dealt with tactfully without offending our ally, like, "hey you're only allowed to attend stakeholder meetings and not actually touch anything. Consider this your warning". I'm less sympathetic to "the law is the law" because of the historical context of what's happening.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago>Who said anything about excusing crime? The person I was replying to. Did we read the same comment? His argument was that the US is wrong to deport Hyundai workers here without legal visas since in his mind, an Apple worker from the story in the book he read, also didn't have legal visa to travel to China on a whim, even though his argument is 100% bogus since the Apple worker most definitely have a visa for that, and even so, two wrongs don't make a right. >I'm less sympathetic to "the law is the law" because of the historical context of what's happening. Careful with such arguments that apply selective enforcement based on the political climate you sympathize with(or not), as others will apply the same judgment to you when you'll get caught and they'll be in power.
- Guvante 1y agoPlease don't pretend that asking to leave the country is the same thing as detaining. Using deport to reference throwing people in jail is deceptive at best.
- ivewonyoung 1y agoThey're just about to fly home free as we speak. https://nypost.com/2025/09/07/us-news/south-korea-and-us-reach-deal-for-release-of-workers-detained-during-hyundai-plant-raid-in-georgia/ https://nypost.com/2025/09/07/us-news/south-korea-and-us-rea...
- crooked-v 1y agoAfter 'negotiations' by South Korea, which, going by the historical pattern, almost certainly means Trump holding those people hostage while demanding incoherent concessions from the South Korean government.
- Guvante 1y agoAh yes because we didn't illegally detain them long term my point that detaining people is different then asking them to leave us bogus. Again I repeat detaining people is not the same thing as asking them to leave and pretending it is helps no one but those who want to be ignorant.
- ivewonyoung 1y agoSource for the detainment being illegal?
- Guvante 1y agoDo you think it is legal to detain someone indefinitely for being here illegally?
- neither_color 1y ago
- zzzeek 1y ago> [paraphrased] What's with this trend on HN ...painting US law enforcement as Nazis who get off on going after innocent people trying to get by? it's in the newspaper. A lot of us read it
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoCan you also process and think critically what you read in the papers?
- mcphage 1y ago> Can you also process and think critically what you read in the papers? Can you?
- pfannkuchen 1y agoI don’t really understand this way of thinking. If someone from USA breaks a law at some point, that doesn’t prevent USA from enforcing a similar law in the future. Not everything is universalist - the interests of the parties are at odds here, and restricting oneself to behaving in a universalist fashion (as a nation) when nobody else does that will just put you at a disadvantage. On the Jobs example - do you expect the US government to enforce Chinese law there? Does Jobs violating Chinese law affect what laws the USA can enforce decades later? This makes no sense.
- jltsiren 1y agoMost laws are little more than temporary opinions. If a law doesn't give you the outcome you wanted, you can always change it. Or you can choose to not enforce it when it would be against your interests. I believe the point is that it's often impossible to build a factory without sending your experts on site to supervise it. And sometimes you need to send people on a short notice, if something unexpected happens or if the people assigned to that site are not available. Then the people will go in with whatever visas are available on such a short notice, hoping that it's not in the destination country's interests to stop them. This is fundamentally not about immigration or laws but whether you want to make your country an attractive place to invest in.
- Guvante 1y agoThere is a difference between enforcing the law (you can't bring workers here on a tourist visa) and raiding a factory putting everyone into jail. For the purposes of "was it a reasonable action" yes it is important to understand how the US has acted in the past.
- crooked-v 1y agoIn this case for at least some of those people there was no visa and no visa needed. South Koreans can make trips for business purposes to the US without any extra paperwork as long as it's under 90 days. It's true that what counts as 'business' and not 'work' has always been an ambiguous line, but given that the arrestees include executives who generally haven't been historically subject to this kind of treatment, I'm sure the lawyers could make a very good argument in their favor.
- Zigurd 1y agoI have a passport with Chinese visas in it. After standing in line for a few hours to get one myself, I used Visa expediters. A business visa might take a week plus the time and effort to create a letter from the business being visited that explains the purpose of the visit. The visa should be good for several months, at least. The example of Steve Jobs telling someone to get there in a day shows lack of preparedness. It was also a more chaotic, less computerized, and therefore somewhat more lax environment back in the day.
- neither_color 1y agoIt sounds like China facilitates foreign direct investment by making it faster and easier for foreign companies to set up factories and fly in talent to train local workers. If I were in a Thucidian power struggle and trying to re-shore industry and all the new manufacturing processes developed abroad in the past 40 years I would consider making it easier for allies who want to invest in the US to do the same.
- catlover76 1y ago[flagged]
- kevin_thibedeau 1y agoI practice a niche physical activity with <1000 practitioners in North America. It is all volunteer based and nobody makes money off of it. Seminars are distributed across US and Canada with instructor level people routinely crossing the border. If you tell the border guards on either side that you're teaching, you get immediately deported.
- deepfriedchokes 1y agoWhat’s the activity?