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South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid
- neom 1y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45158030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45158030
- esalman 1y agoThe World Cup next year is going to be a shit show. My first world cup was 1994 and I watched every one of them on TV live. This would be the first time it'll happen in a city where I live (LA). This will also be the first world cup my son will watch. But I'm apprehensive of getting tickets for my family due to fear of harassment.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- fluoridation 1y agoGood luck getting tickets either way. You're going to be competing for them with fanatics from all around the world.
- esalman 1y agoHopefully current immigration crackdown will scare some of the fanatics away haha
- londons_explore 1y agoAnd then next week the exact same workers will return to the US and work will continue, delayed by 2 weeks.
- daveguy 1y agoAnd every auto company who was considering putting a plant in the US to avoid Trumpty Dumpty's tariffs will now have to consider Trumpty Dumpty's harassment of workers.
- pavel_lishin 1y agoWhy would they risk it? I'd never return to this country again.
- mothballed 1y ago[flagged]
- pavel_lishin 1y agoSure. But if you're just here on a work trip, why would you want to ever come back?
- mothballed 1y agoThey may come to see it more like a mercenary does. Some may be jailed, hurt, tortured in Central America, etc but if the pay is high enough it is worth the risks. If they offer high enough more than they can get in South Korea, people will come.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lkois 1y agoSure they may become mercenaries. Maybe "Hyundai factory worker" is akin to "remote oil rig worker". Or they could just be regular people with regular, stable jobs because they haven't chased a life of risk.
- sunrisetiger 1y agoSome Korean firms have already halted business travel to the US except for critical tasks.
- mempko 1y ago[flagged]
- Avicebron 1y agoAnd if as a requirement for allowing foreign workers into the US they had to train 1-2 US workers to their own level of expertise, would that be a fair trade?
- yladiz 1y agoIt would be impossible, a lot of the expertise that these people have would take years to train another person to have.
- behnamoh 1y agoSo your solution is to shut our eyes and let undocumented foreigners take the jobs that a well-educated American society could fulfill?
- mempko 1y agoShow me any evidence your Republican party cares about educating Americans. Are they supporting better pay for teachers? Are they supporting more resources to schools? Are they pushing for tuition free college?
- pylua 1y agoExactly. I’m not sure why this is a controversial take.
- yladiz 1y agoI didn't propose a solution, and I don't have one, just that the parent's idea wouldn't work in practice.
- pavel_lishin 1y agoThat's a lot of words to put in someone's mouth.
- comrade1234 1y agoI wonder how much was the administrative fee that Korea had to pay to release the hosta... I mean criminals.
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- behnamoh 1y agoHyundai is notorious for shitty dealers and service, to the point that people hesitate to purchase from their luxury brand, Genesis, to avoid these dealers. Meanwhile, I've heard of Koreans who confirm that the company's branches in Korea have much better dealers. Something seems off, then. Could it be the corporate greed and lousy US regulations that have allowed Hyundai to keep their shady tactics for decades in America?
- Bud 1y agoI have an Ioniq 5 and I have had nothing but perfect experiences with my Hyundai dealer. Both for sales, and service. Not that service has been much of a thing, since EVs require so little service. It's also clearly not just me, as the Ioniq 5 has been rated the EV of the year several years running by multiple publications.
- lisbbb 1y ago[flagged]
- qmmmur 1y agoYou are not discussing this in good faith. What are the parameters that allow have made you determine they are pieces of crap?
- lisbbb 1y agoGenesis barely had any "dealerships" and most times people could not get service much of anywhere for those cars, which is a major turnoff. Also, having to walk into a Hyundai dealership is like taking the train from Philly to Camden.
- slt2021 1y agoAll dealerships are US citizen owned, Huyndai Motor has zero stake in them. It is your fellow foundational Americans who are screwing you over, as always
- pylua 1y agoI’ve been confused by reading the articles and comments on this matter. Are they in the country illegally ? Regardless I am glad the workers get to go home. If it is illegal I’d imagine the company should be at fault.
- pnw 1y agoYes, 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.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoAlso short-sighted: pissing off our international partners that we would rather build factories in the U.S.
- pylua 1y agoAssuming 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.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoSomeone trying to be diplomatic might, for example, allow them a window of time within which to apply to extend their visas.
- pavel_lishin 1y ago> He said that some of the detained workers had illegally crossed the U.S. border, while others had entered the country legally but had expired visas or had entered on a visa waiver that prohibited them from working. How many of the 300+ South Korean workers does this describe?
- pnw 1y agoAll of them. You can watch the entire press conference at https://www.youtube.com/live/AD7n_nSOorU https://www.youtube.com/live/AD7n_nSOorU
- pavel_lishin 1y agoAh, thank you - I saw your other comment elsewhere with a link to this, I appreciate that and the quotes you pulled out of it.
- defrost 1y agoA HSI / ICE press conference on the facts carries all the credibility of a RFK Jr press conference on vaccines though . . .
- sandshaker_au 1y ago[flagged]
- sandshaker_au 1y ago[flagged]
- FridayoLeary 1y agoWhat nobody is discussing is why hyundai was apparently employing 500 illegal workers [edit: i see some HNers have commented on it. The news sites and reddit have all somehow completely overlooked this significant angle]. I think it's reasonable to question if they got full employment rights as if they had been legal residents. Frankly i'm amazed the white house hasn't yet made a huge fuss about it and why hyundai isn't being held to account. You can tell me that i've got it all wrong, and the workers were completely legal and they weren't exploiting cheap labour and this isn't a huge scandal, but please back up your claims. As far as i can tell hyundai is getting away scott free with breaking the law because they are a big corporation.
- throwawaymaths 1y agoIts been discussed. Iiuc, Currently unlike other countries in a similar economic relationship as it, south Korea does not have access to a quota for short term business consultative employees, and Korean firms have been in the habit of misclassifying short term immigrant employees to get them in the door, doing the subcontracting trick to shield the supercontractor (in this case LG/Hyundai) from liability... In case it goes south, as it did this time.
- blargey 1y agoIt's stated clearly that the factory in question is under construction. There are multiple such factories being constructed by Hyundai in Georgia, each under an agreement with the state to employ several thousand locals once they get it running, in exchange for incentives to build on US soil in the first place. (ex/ 8,100 local jobs under this plan, for example https://georgia.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/hyundai_motor_group_incentives_-_updated_executive_summary_09.08.23_final.pdf https://georgia.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/hyundai_moto... ) These people were brought there for one-off, short-term, specialized work to get the factory ready, to start employing those thousands of locals, as per Hyundai's agreement with Georgia's state govt. They abused temporary / non-work visas to do so, but not to displace local labor (which wouldn't know how to do the job) - rather, to help build a new source of local labor. As such, it's likely that there isn't a single person in the world who "wins" because of this deportation, except maybe some harangued ICE official with quotas to fill. Maybe that's why "the white house hasn't yet made a huge fuss about it and why hyundai isn't being held to account."
- goranmoomin 1y agoDisclaimer: I’m a South Korean, so I’m gonna be hugely biased. But with the disclaimer, the whole raid is stupid – I thought the US govt was trying to bring jobs to the states, encourage foreign investments, and move manufacturing over there? And then the very next thing they do is detaining and deporting people who are there to literally do that? Even if you’re gonna complain about not having the correct visas, at least treat the people who are helping your country in good faith, not like people who got caught while trying to smuggle in across the border. About the visa situation – quoting a comment from the past article since it explains it more clearly than what I could possible do: > For people saying "they should have had the right visa", no one does this. > Any day of the week all of the big tech companies will have dozens of overseas engineers in the US attending meetings, and gasp working on-site (writing code, etc). They all have either tourist visas or visa waivers. > And it's the same thing when the US engineers visit the remote sites in other countries. > Regardless of what the letter of the law is, this has long been the practice, because it's the only workable solution and is clearly within the spirit of the law. > In this case LG was fitting out a new batter factory. That is a very complex setup with highly specialized machines. The ONLY way that was ever going to happen was with LG specialists coming over to do the setup and get the line working. And it's almost certain that getting "correct" visas for all these people would have been practically impossible, and has not been the actual practice for many decades. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45159119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45159119
- leptons 1y agoI think the issue is that building factories in the US and then filling them with foreign workers is the opposite of bringing jobs to the US - those 300 jobs should be US jobs, not South Korean jobs. That said, I think what ICE has been doing is very wrong.
- blargey 1y agoThe factory isn't even being "filled with foreign workers", it's being set up by foreign workers so they can start employing 10x as many locals to actually staff it long term.
- sungchi 1y agoIn practice, Korean staff are essential for the initial setup of Korean companies’ factories. But even though Korea has an FTA with the US, it’s not allocated short-term work visa quotas (unlike Singapore, Chile, or Australia). For various political reasons, Korean firms have instead relied on ESTA short-term visas, and the US had tacitly allowed it. This time, however, a Republican filed a complaint saying these companies weren’t hiring Americans, which left ICE with little choice but to step in.
- geeunits 1y agoYeah, one or two sneaky Koreans to help the cultural divide sounds plausibly okay, but an entire factory of undocumented workers? Seems hard to wash this one any way but clean.
- Bud 1y agoUh, they were BUILDING the factory. Which was then going to provide hundreds of jobs to Americans. Seems hard to characterize this in any way other than calling it incredibly stupid.
- binary132 1y agospell out for me how that makes it ok to use undocumented labor
- cmdli 1y agoBecause the documentation is intentionally obtuse and difficult, meaning that it is nearly impossible to get approval for these kinds of things even though they benefit the US immensely. It's like if a neighbor fixes your fence without asking you first. Wrong? Maybe. Harmful? Definitely not.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoNo excuse! The neighbor clearly should have paid to train a local worker in fence-fixing for a year or two, and then paid the local worker's wages while fixing the fence, and then let the worker go as they don't need to fix a fence again for some time. Granted that would take two years and tens of thousands of dollars more than the neighbor fixing it themselves, but that's the neighbor's problem. (well, and now the problem of the homeowner with the fence that has to wait 2 more years to get their fence fixed)
- geor9e 1y agoI used to build factories. We'd design and install the robots and machines of the assembly line. Final install took months. We never got work visas in those countries. We'd just say we were there for engineering meetings. Which we did have, but mainly we were installing, calibrating, and testing the machines we designed. I wonder if it's something like that. We did however hire local subcontractor labor for the generic work. If we sent 300 Americans over I suspect it might have set off some alarms.
- colechristensen 1y agoThe BBC said they were all subcontractors and as you suggest, mechanics involved in setting up the factory in some way. Seems like it's exactly that, a contract house not wanting to go through the process of getting proper visas and getting folks in in any way. As with a lot of things, I'm not so opposed to enforcing visa rules for something like this but maybe the shackles and method of detention weren't all that necessary. Also worth looking at fixing the reasons why companies are skipping the proper visa process, because nobody at all should be (or is?) opposed to LG/Hyundai setting up a factory in the US. Things we should be doing with a helping hand are being done with guns drawn instead. But we all know they're doing it this way for the populist theater, there's folks out there that want to watch fascist police state theater on the evening news.
- tripletao 1y agoYou weren't necessarily acting unlawfully, and neither were the Koreans. From reports, they seemed to mostly have an ESTA or B-1 visa. This doesn't allow "work", but it does allow many business activities. For example: > 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. https://es.usembassy.gov/visas/commercial-industrial-workers/ https://es.usembassy.gov/visas/commercial-industrial-workers... Most other countries have similar policies. The line between those permitted activities and "work" is notoriously blurry. This often results in unexpectedly denied visas, and sometimes results in nasty letters or fines. It almost never results in this kind of show of physical force, even in unfree countries.
- animex 1y agoIn the mid-2000s I was doing some consulting in middle America and noticed a bunch of Indian IT workers staying at the same hotel I was staying at. Since, I was Indian-origin, we engaged in some small-chat. They were working for a now defunct telecom giant (but contracted by one of the big Indian consultancies) on various software projects. There were there on not, H1Bs, but another class of short-term business-meeting only visas. They told me every 3 months a whole new team would cycle onto the project with a fresh set of business visas and the rest would cycle back home, rinse-repeat. They weren't allowed to "work" per say, and some of their colleagues got rejected at the border by more savvy border agents. But for every 1 rejection, 20 of them would get through.
- ChrisArchitect 1y ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45158030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45158030
- insane_dreamer 1y agoBUILD FACTORIES IN AMERICA! also WE MIGHT JUST RANDOMLY DECIDE TO ARREST AND DEPORT YOUR WORKERS WHO ARE SETTING UP THOSE FACTORIES.