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US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

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Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#61
post #29

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…

It hasn't happened because no President has been stupid enough to deport them en-masse. Even the current guy has admitted that he won't focus on agriculture workers because it would be bad for business. Nobody is hiring illegal workers to save 10¢. They are getting paid significantly less than minimum wage.

>They are getting paid significantly less than minimum wage.

Which is bad for everyone except business owners who vacuum up all the profits from exploiting below minimum wage labor, and then socialize the cost of taxless under the table work of illegals to the state and by extension to the taxpayer.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably not your intention, but I greatly dislike this argument, as it's similar ones were made to justify previous inhumane practices that were legal before the conclusion of the US Civil war. If manual labor is required for agriculture, let the market absorb the real cost and pay the workers the correct wage instead of exploiting them.

A countries agricultural base being dependent on undocumented migrant workers is bad and should be corrected. However simply deporting all the migrants overnight with no further action doesn't fix the underlying problem, doesn't help the industry, and doesn't help the consumers. All things being equal, people will generally choose to follow the law. So figure out why the migrants and their employers are choosing not…

You could do like Australia, offer a working-holiday visa with the possibility to renew it for up to 3 years on the condition that you spend a certain amount of time working on a farm/ in rural area.

Loads of people do it in Australia and it helps tremendously. It's not perfect for sure, but it's something.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#63

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?

It's probably not your intention, but I greatly dislike this argument, as it's similar ones were made to justify previous inhumane practices that were legal before the conclusion of the US Civil war. If manual labor is required for agriculture, let the market absorb the real cost and pay the workers the correct wage instead of exploiting them.

The process can be orderly. I live in a town with a couple of commercial orchardist, and they get their apples picked by workers on temporary work visas every year for decades now. These commercial orchards are apparently economically viable, even though they are smaller than a typical commercial orchard in Washington state, for example.

As with tariffs, I can imagine this situation being less orderly or predictable now. But I've seen both theory and practice work as intended.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#64

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…

[flagged]

Who 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.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#65
post #29

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…

It hasn't happened because no President has been stupid enough to deport them en-masse. Even the current guy has admitted that he won't focus on agriculture workers because it would be bad for business. Nobody is hiring illegal workers to save 10¢. They are getting paid significantly less than minimum wage.

> It hasn't happened because no President has been stupid enough to deport them en-masse.

Britain enters the room...

Short-term farm labourers like fruit pickers weren't deported as such after Brexit (I think), and they were earning roughly double the minimum wage, but the jobs were seasonal so many workers spent the winter in their home countries.

After Brexit:

> A shortage of farm workers created by Brexit led to 8,000 tonnes of berries going unpicked last year.

The EU citizens have been replaced by labourers (with the appropriate visas etc) from Asia, but the wages have gone up and the costs of travel.

(I don't know how this affected fruit/vegetable prices. There were other causes of inflation at the same time.)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/14/why-uk-farms... (NB 2022.)

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#66

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…

If I understand the case with Hyundai correctly, the problem is not that people work without proper visas, but the interpretation of visa terms by ICE, which means that if they are to meet deportation KPIs, this may impact those who are working legally. The only racist angle to that will be if ICE is using racial profiling to pick the targets (for non-American it’s actually quite uncomfortable to see racism popping o…

Anna Sorokin abused visa waivers to live and work in the US illegally for years. Somehow she still hasn't been deported despite being a felon and has even been frog marched to the airport where she was bizarrely allowed to refuse deportation. Nobody at ICE is apparently checking for that form of abuse.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#67

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.

There's plenty of food that can't be harvested by machine yet, and probably won't be anytime in the near future.

All the big brains in Silicon Valley can invent a bl*wj*b machine that is sync'd to a cloud-connected VR headset but can't build a machine to pick apples or tomatoes efficiently?

Perhaps our priorities as a society are misplaced.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Who 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…

>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.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#69

Whats [additionally] infuriating for me is all of this is funded by my tax bill. Both Hyundai taking massive federal incentives, and the subsequent arrests. I just think of the money wasn't collected/handed out to them in the first place we wouldn't be in this situation.

you fail to understand basic economics. states AND countries provide tax breaks to lure in businesses with certain agreements. In the long term, this provides jobs, training, benefits local economy, income taxes, raises property values, increases property taxes, etc.

And your tax contribution to would be %.0001. There are MANY things about the government to be infuriated at but this isn't one of them.

Re: US to target more businesses after Hyundai raid

#70

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…

The citizenry has to plan for a future in their home economy. That make labor intensive minimum wage jobs a bad option if you need to hold two jobs to get ahead. Migrants can tough it out for a few annual trips and return with more savings than they could generate at home.
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