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South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid

apnews.com

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Re: South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid

#81

Post by PhantomHour »

pnw wrote: post #38
detaro wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, they all lacked work visas. Source?

This press conference is the source of all of the articles. https://www.youtube.com/live/AD7n_nSOorU 4:30 Describes the search warrants and arrests. 5:10 "475 were illegally present in the United States" 6:25 "Majority were Korean nationals" No criminal charges yet. It's an ongoing investigation.

> 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.

Re: South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid

#82

Post by dv_dt »

sungchi wrote: post #44

In 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 com…

If there were actually any systemic visa problems then a few discreet phone calls and discussions between governments and executives could have cleared this up without putting anyone in cuffs. If it had desired, the US government could have bulk granted visas to any warmup worker trying to get this US plant online. Doing a raid publicly and loudly puts a lot of current and future investment at risk for very little gain.

Re: South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid

#83

Post by animex »

In 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.

Re: South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid

#84

Post by dolebirchwood »

cmdli wrote: post #71
binary132 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spell out for me how that makes it ok to use undocumented labor

Because 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.

Weird analogy, but I don't want my neighbor fixing my fence -- let alone stepping onto my property to do anything else for that matter.

Re: South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid

#85

Post by Espressosaurus »

sungchi wrote: post #44

In 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 com…

"little choice"

Re: South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid

#86

Post by slt2021 »

behnamoh wrote: post #10

Hyundai 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 Am…

All 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

Re: South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid

#87

Post by clipsy »

sungchi wrote: post #66
FridayoLeary wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm completely baffled by that. It would be preferable for the ICE to turn a blind eye to a huge corporation that is breaking the law in a large and systemic manner? It sounds like Hyundai has been dealing with the us in bad faith. Or the standing practice has been to choose not to enforce the law based on political considerations. That sounds awfully like end stage capitalism to me...

I don’t know the full story, but a couple of things seem likely. One is political pressure—ICE needed to show they were “doing something,” which explains the 500 agents and helicopters. The other is that it works as a signal from Trump: if you’re a foreign company, invest all you want, but make sure the jobs and know-how go to Americans from the start.

I think the signal will more likely be received as: "if you're a foreign company, don't invest in the US."

Re: South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid

#88

Post by overfeed »

binary132 wrote: post #65
Bud wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, 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.

spell out for me how that makes it ok to use undocumented labor

> spell out for me how that makes it ok to use undocumented labor

The same way it is ok to go 1-5 mph over the speed limit on the freeway. Both are illegal on paper, but in practice, law enforcement turns a blind eye and actual enforcement would entangle a lot of people and interfere with the status quo. The juice is probably not worth the squeeze, as Arizona and Florida found out.

Re: South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid

#89

Post by [deleted] »

mothballed wrote: post #51
pavel_lishin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But if you're just here on a work trip, why would you want to ever come back?

They 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]

Re: South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid

#90

Post by leptons »

goranmoomin wrote: post #32

Disclaimer: 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 l…

I 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.
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