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US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

reuters.com

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Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#41

Post by busterarm »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #11

Curious to see what comes home to roost. I mean when, for example, you clear out the agriculture workers of the U.S. without any thought as to how or what you are going to do to replace them, well, expect higher grocery prices I guess?

Not picking any particular dog in this fight, but the western labor market also has become very adversarial.

I knew a guy whose family had a tree nursery in Texas and they stopped hiring citizens and eventually white people outside of blood relatives completely. They tried for quite a long time, including raising prices, long training periods and safety equipment purchases, etc.

Eventually after several dozen people "accidentally" shear off a tiny piece of their pinky to seek a Workers Compensation claim only weeks into the job trying to claim permanent disability, you either stop putting yourself at risk or you go out of business.

They even won most of the cases, largely because they would usually catch these dummies on camera doing it intentionally, but the legal defense itself is still quite expensive and draining...

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#42

Post by crooked-v »

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #31
tootie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That presumes that this kind of enforcement is a net positive and I'm pretty convinced it isn't. The distinction between legal and illegal immigration is essentially arbitrary. Illegal immigration is not a crime of morality, it's basically one of economics. The legal framework theoretically is designed to produce an optimal outcome for the health and wealth of the nation and presently it is not doing that at all. We…

Most lines are. It is a line we agreed on as a society. Just for a quick comparison, 21 is a legal drinking age in US ( going after less incendiary example just to prove a point ). But, and here is my subtle point, either those are real lines or there are not. If they are real, they should be enforced and if they are not, they should be nulled. Before I offer a reflexive response, I think it is worth to task a simple…

> why?

Because without immigration, the population of the US will objectively shrink over time, and that's bad for both the country in the abstract and the personal welfare of the average middle class person as they reach old age.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#43

Post by shrubble »

busterarm wrote: post #33
shrubble wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument (which I’ve heard many times before) is easily refuted by looking at YouTube videos for “commercial xxx harvesting” where xxx is the vegetable or fruit in question. For instance the carrot harvester that can harvest tons of carrots each hour: you could pay the driver $126k per year and the carrot price per pound would not even move 2 pennies at retail.

Not everything can be harvested with big machines. Pretty much all tree fruits, asparagus, peppers, etc are harvested by hand. If you want blueberries or strawberries that look nice enough to be sold to consumers whole, those are hand-harvested every time.

There are some things that are harvested by hand; even in those cases, you can watch a typical process and determine the small labor component.

Asparagus for example is harvested in less than 20 seconds per bunch. Even at $50/hour that is a cost of less than 30 cents per bunch; which sells for how much in the store?

1000s of workers harvest over 9 billion pounds of apples every year-again the labor component is smaller than you’d think.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#44

Post by crooked-v »

sillywalk wrote: post #36
JKCalhoun wrote: post #11

Curious to see what comes home to roost. I mean when, for example, you clear out the agriculture workers of the U.S. without any thought as to how or what you are going to do to replace them, well, expect higher grocery prices I guess?

The US Secretary of Agriculture suggested Medicaid recipients and automation. I doubt that'll work. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/09/trump-agricu...

Don't forget RFK wanting to round up addicts for 'wellness farms'.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#45

Post by allannienhuis »

busterarm wrote: post #33
shrubble wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument (which I’ve heard many times before) is easily refuted by looking at YouTube videos for “commercial xxx harvesting” where xxx is the vegetable or fruit in question. For instance the carrot harvester that can harvest tons of carrots each hour: you could pay the driver $126k per year and the carrot price per pound would not even move 2 pennies at retail.

Not everything can be harvested with big machines. Pretty much all tree fruits, asparagus, peppers, etc are harvested by hand. If you want blueberries or strawberries that look nice enough to be sold to consumers whole, those are hand-harvested every time.

That last statement isn’t true. I know people with a blueberry farm that machine processes (with extra human qa step) blueberries packaged for retail sale.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#46

Post by AngryData »

hilsdev wrote: post #14
JKCalhoun wrote: post #11

Curious to see what comes home to roost. I mean when, for example, you clear out the agriculture workers of the U.S. without any thought as to how or what you are going to do to replace them, well, expect higher grocery prices I guess?

The labor cost of food is near the bottom of the price factors.

Yeah but you still need people to do it and paying a bit better is not going to get an immediate response of many tens of thousands of workers to quit their jobs to do seasonal and migratory work across multiple states living out of vans and campers with no insurance and increased workload and injury rate. Many crops are just going to rot, output will be lower, and prices will still rise. At some point years down the line sure things might improve and settle out and more US people can fill a larger number of those roles, but it will not happen quickly, especially not for token wage increases, and will likely never gain the workforce numbers that migratory farm workers offer who travel not just across the US but also throughout Central and South America. A US citizen is never going to work in Mexico or Brazil during off seasons for US crops because it basically represents a net-zero or negative wage converting it back into US currency to come live back here.

Ive done farm and trade work my whole life, physical work is not a problem, but even if you doubled the pay for picking tomatoes and other fruits and lettuces, I would not consider for a second joining that workforce even if I was otherwise homeless. Im not even sure being a row crop farmer that doesn't even need extra labor is worth the effort. Farms are getting the least and smallest margins by far for food production out of anybody in the food logistics supply line and there is no potential windfall for workers and no career path to work up from picking fruits.

Would I like people picking fruit to earn more money and have stables lives and not have to migrate across the country living in vans? Of course, 100%. But without a huge overhaul of our economic priorities and policies towards worker rights and wages, which is the exact opposite direction from where we have been heading the last 60+ years, none of that is going to change regardless of what prices people are willing to pay for food. The base of the agricultural market of farms and the workers directly harvesting food is and has been running on thinner margins than pretty much any other industry in existence. A 2% return on a farmer's seed and fuel and fertilizer inputs is considered a great success.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#47

Post by pfannkuchen »

neither_color wrote: post #23

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 abroa…

I 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.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#48

Post by Zigurd »

neither_color wrote: post #23

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 abroa…

I 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.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#49

Post by crooked-v »

hamdingers wrote: post #32
sugarpimpdorsey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean when, for example, you clear out the agriculture workers of the U.S. without any thought as to how or what you are going to do to replace them, well, expect higher grocery prices I guess Most ag workers are here on... ag work visas. There are processes in place to facilitate this seasonal work. "No more strawberries/lettuce/etc when you kick out all the illegals!" has been a rallying cry on lefty social medi…

> "No more strawberries/lettuce/etc when you kick out all the illegals!" has been a rallying cry on lefty social media for the last few years and it... hasn't happened? Why would it have happened? "All the illegals" have not been kicked out, so what are you basing this statement on? Bad faith framing.

It's already happening, and is part of the reason food prices are going up right now: https://www.newsweek.com/ice-immigration-raids-farms-crops-r...

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#50

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

neither_color wrote: post #23

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 abroa…

I 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.
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