I don’t think parading out engineers in shackles for a photo op was a good idea.
From another article:
> Images of South Koreans being shackled at the wrists and ankles have caused outrage in South Korea, a key U.S. ally in Asia that has pledged hundreds of billions in U.S. investment as part of tariff negotiations.
It’s just not smart, not good politics and not good business.
This is just American imperialism brought home, and it's already being targeted at American citizens themselves. Now you're starting to get a taste of how people in many countries feel about the US.
I mean sure, but you can't pretend this has been a standard fixture of US immigration policy in living memory.
Calling it "American imperialism" doesn't make sense because even Trump's stated (and admittedly imperial) goals don't actually line up here.
It may not be smart or good business but it's great politics. It's easy to blame foreigners for any perceived wrong, especially if they're breaking the rules. Your constituents believe that you're setting things right.
It will undoubtedly have negative financial effect on those same constituents, but there's always someone else to arrest and take the blame. It's fantastic politics.
Even if they aren’t breaking the rules, you just make your visa policies complicated enough that you can say they might be breaking rules and your constituents will just eat it all up. Meanwhile South Korea decides getting closer to China might be the better course of action.
>> Meanwhile South Korea decides getting closer to China might be the better course of action.
Good for them. If USA is not a reliable ally anymore, not a surprise there are active talks on free trade agreement between China, Japan and Korea.
I don’t think that’s the issue here? The workers were breaking the laws, unacceptable, but there is little evidence that they are a danger to society or the agents handling them. There could have been much better ways to handle this or maybe, hmm, not televise for the whole world to see. It was done to humiliate. Period.
Just to clarify, I agreed with the OP that it wasn't a good idea. It's bad economics, bad precedent, bad foreign policy, and a bunch of other bad things.
I was speaking solely about politics, i.e. winning elections. And if you can't win elections, none of your other policies matter.
> bad foreign policy
From my reading, this is what they seem to have meant by "bad politics". It's just not clear that OP meant "politics" strictly as "winning elections". I agree that it's good domestic politics. It may have even been seen as a tradeoff by the administration.
This is why politics is where it is — winning one election is less important than shifting the Overton window. The right wing know this and it’s their focus. When ‘moderates’ lean right to ‘win elections’ they shoot their future political aims in the foot
Exactly. The reason this was bad politics is that it created more pain than was necessary for the desired gain.
If Trump wanted leverage in negotiations and to appear strong on immigration... fine.
But there are so many ways of accomplishing that that didn't also alienate and piss off an ally to the extent this perp photo shoot did.
Hell, the government could have just politely detained them, put out a big splashy press release, then worked with the South Korean embassy to repatriate them. Same benefit, fewer hard feelings.
In contrast, as a result now there's going to be much higher government and South Korean domestic pushback on exactly the kind of US investment Trump wants.
It's one thing when someone does something distasteful but gets benefit out of going that far. It's another when they do it because they're inept.
The only people this excess played well for was Trump's base, and as others pointed out, there are plenty of less trade sensitive immigrant groups that could have been substituted, if that was the goal.
> The workers were breaking the laws, ...
How sure are we of that? Did we really get this information from trustworthy sources?
Not all of them were, and at least one of the arrested workers was here fully legally.
Sure but you arrest the right foreigners.
Did America run out of Hondurians? Going after Koreans is just dumb on so many levels it's like America wants China to win.
Many people wonder/suspect Trump is on the Chinese payroll.
Smart guy, he is on both chinese and russian payroll!
Don't forget Qatar. $400m jet.
But it looks like a payback for one-time favor.
Not sure if you are saying this as snark, but yes, trump is on the side of "who is paying me today". Not sure how this is not blatantly clear by now. And Russia, China, et al., who have a real interest in weakening the US understand they have been given a gift by overly sensitive and angry American-hating magas in trump.
> It’s just not smart, not good politics and not good business.
So in other words SOP
Separate Our Priorities
*SOP for Republicans whenever they get ahold of government.
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This government has made big spectacle and promises on deportation. Though the government has seemingly denied there are reports that field offices need to make 75 arrests per day and failing to do so will lead to "accountability": https://immpolicytracking.org/policies/report-ice-directed-t...
This means there is a huge incentive to create spectacle out of arrests. So, that in case the field office lags behind, they can always point to the photo op - See how hard we were working there?
This might not hurt the government politically because supporters can see those hard hats and exclaim - See they were wearing hard hats, how were they not breaking the law?
But at the cost of creating an unnecessary diplomatic crisis. Even if there were visa issues, this puts South Korean government in a bind - they need to answer to their constituents. Being seen as incompetent and unable to save its citizen abroad is a sensitive topic in many countries.
Investments might be impacted as well. It seems to me that many Trump supporters think international politics requires blustering. But much of the work happens behind the scenes.
Supposedly ICE'a warrant was for 4 specific people, and they went in and ended up detaining and arresting ~475 people. Thats just so unbelievably wild to me.
ICE has bravely rescued us from the menace of people building battery factories. Forget fentanyl, trafficking, or violent crime—our real existential threat was clearly a few Korean engineers with power tools. Obviously, they were biding their time before graduating to cartel kingpins. And thank heavens the plant won’t be finished—who actually wants it and the jobs, infrastructure, etc it would bring.
Sleep well, folks—America is saved, one deported factory worker at a time.
The bit that gets me is another country is kinda handing over its technology to USA, so why get in the way?
When US engineers went to China to offshore US factories there, I doubt China got in the way. Probably watched with heavy interest but definitely not hindered in any way.
It’s the other end of the spectrum from migrants from other countries doing the large scale manual labor for little pay by American standards, but high pay by their own. Ultimately everyone benefits.
It’s not about economics. It’s about racism and nationalism through and through. You can’t look at it with a rationalist lens or it can’t make sense. The issue is the dilution of a perceived whiteness of the American identity being threatened by non-white immigration. It doesn’t matter why the Korean workers were here or how tenuous or nonexistent the immigration violation claims were. It matters they weren’t white.
For proof, which hasn’t been particularly hidden, see the extreme efforts to create a false narrative (including the president confronting a foreign leader with photographs from a completely different country) of white persecution in South Africa and a recalibration of refugee program to prioritize white South Africans. It’s the whole “reverse discrimination” malarkey (as if discrimination is structurally one way) playing out with fabrication and lies since they couldn’t find real facts. A rationalist argument can’t be found, because it’s not rational - it’s just racist nationalism.
This is going to be remembered in history globally as one of the embarrassing low points that beggars the question of American moral standing , which is likewise a fallacious tu quoque argument. What’s going on ignores the fact the founding fathers were enlightenment liberal humanists of the extreme degree, and while creatures of their time, endeavored hard to establish a construct in the constitution and bill of rights a system that will eventually and stably arrive at an ideal liberal humanist society. They recognized with pretty clear sightedness their own imperfections in this regard and recognized society changes slowly, but believed the constitution and bill of rights would make the change inexorable. I for one agree after studying it for some time. This means this aberration we see today, which is reminiscent of Sulla’s attack on the Roman republic, was well planned for an accounted for. They knew clearly and better than we do the natural tendency of man, and specifically corrupt ambitious racist theologists as their time was steeped in, and built a system that mean reverts always towards a liberal humanist outcome.
The question to my mind is will I live to see the damage undone and is my daughter equipped to right the ship in her life time.
>Ultimately everyone benefits. >It’s not about economics.
What about the local citizen who is clearly neither the migrant nor the capitalist, both of whom conduct wage arbitrage the local doesn't benefit from? How is that not economic and why is that assumed to be racist? Savannah is almost 50% Black https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah,_Georgia#Demographics but they can't employ a workforce that even maybe resembles the local demographics?
Why isn't it rational for the local citizens to see a business skirting the law to get American consumer dollars but avoid American wages and calculate that's not just not to their benefit, its to their detriment?
> but they can't employ a workforce that even maybe resembles the local demographics?
I don't imagine a lot of Americans in Savannah have experience standing up a battery factory, which is also a temporary job by definition.
Is it that these were hundreds of the best battery factory professional engineers in SK or just a cultural match?
How is competence built with any offshoring of a new thing? I think it’s a stretch to say Americans can’t be trained to make a factory.
I think the simplest explanation is the likely one: that costs money, we can avoid paying if we use an underclass that doesn’t follow the rules or share the costs of locals we can undercut.
> Is it that these were hundreds of the best battery factory professional engineers in SK or just a cultural match?
SK has been building battery factories for a while, naturally, they ended up with an experienced talent pool.
> How is competence built with any offshoring of a new thing?
China has the blueprint: enforce knowledge sharing/knowledge transfer to local entities, and provide adequate direction and government funding.
> I think it’s a stretch to say Americans can’t be trained to make a factory.
Experience =/= capability - Americans certainly can be trained, but who's paying (and waiting) for that? Does it make economic sense to do so for a one-and-done project? LG Chem (and its vendor ecosystem) have been building battery factories for well over a decade now, and will continue to use that competency. What would happen to your hypothetical newly-trained, all-American battery-factory builders once the Savannah project is up and running? Especially under this administration that is set on cutting the knees from under renewables.
The US is the wealthiest empire the world has ever seen.
If that money isn't trickling down to rural America don't blame Johnny Foreigner blame your very white and very old leaders in Washington.
Okay but they’re so far away and indirectly related they might as well be on a different planet from the POV of locals.
I don’t think race affects the vote for permitting or funding this program that equates to anything more than “my donors treat me very well if I vote for thing so line goes up”. In other words, enabling a underclass is entirely compatible with diverse .gov representatives.
Without knowing the specifics, I would assume two things. Once the factory is working, it will employ local people - either people who already lived there or people who came to the town to work in the factory. It will also support an ecosystem of suppliers, some of whom will build their factories nearby. The second thing is that usually businesses pay some sort of local tax that supports the town infrastructure, is that not the case there?
It sure could be, it could also turn into an Amazon-Tijuana situation at the negative extreme (https://youtu.be/HFlsW9yulH0?si=n-FKLqVOEWWmDOpa)
In the pov of locals excluded (or let’s say not hired) from the factory, they have less chance of access to a wage and skill development than those on the inside.
It’s possible we didn’t get it built so they just didn’t reach the step where they do a hiring event. It’s also possible they were never going to hire locals, and parts and labor were shipped in with no intent to use the area for anything but a footprint and utilities.
We see what we want to see in these things, and you’re right, it could have had some positives eventually.
> It’s also possible they were never going to hire locals
I find that very unlikely. In Slovakia we have a lot of Korean factories (Kia, Samsung etc) and while the management is Korean, they always hire local workers if available, otherwise agencies hire who's available - in our case workers from Serbia, Ukraine and Central Asia (that's not an unique situation, there is a general shortage of relatively-low-wage workers in the EU so people from outside are brought in to work here full time).
> who actually wants it and the jobs, infrastructure, etc it would bring.
I mean--if it's green tech, it has to be impeded. Otherwise how can we continue to burn oil?
It feels like this was more done initially to meet a quota. Lady reports to ICE she thinks illegals working there. ICE does some sorta check and realized there might be an issue with a couple and extrapolated it to all Asians working in the facility. Saw a big juicy chance to roll out the team and detain a ton of people thinking it make Bondi and Trump happy. Now Trump is stuck looking weak to Koreans (and in turn china and India) or weak to his base depending on who he sides with which right now looks to be his base.
Yeah no.
Do you have another explanation?
Police in the US are way too quick to handcuff people. It should be reserved for violent or aggressive suspects, or at least require formal justification as is required in much of Europe. Police here will take a calm and cooperative person and rob them of their most fundamental human right, merely as a convenience.
I saw a body cam video on Youtube yesterday (which wasn't outrageous, so I doubt it was one of the fake ones.) It might have been edited to seem more out-of-line than it was, but I don't think it matters.
In it, a wife had died in the shower, and the husband and his father had been inside the house while the shower was on, but "had not talked to her."
Naturally, suspicions arose and they wanted to talk more to the husband, but the way the officers continued to rile up the father, who was probably in chock after finding out his son might be a murderer, was just pure unprofessionalism. They could have taken a step back, or avoided being four officers against one father, or any other obvious technique to de-escalate, but nope. Just continue pushing, arguing and believing that "doing our job" never means re-assessing the approach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVo8PRRkWHc
Edit: spelling
such procedures don't appear from thin air - they indicate low trust toward citizens (or at least the worst cases of them) whether in the present, or in the past
Be very careful to consider the possibility of selection bias at work. More interactions with police than ever gain media attention, social media virality and this especially applies to the cases where the encounter is recorded on video (increasingly common due to body and phone cams too). It's become more easy than ever to do such a thing and Of these, guess which ones get the most media exposure. The dramatic ones, either with police aggression or aggression from the civilian in the encounter.
But even all of these that emerge in a given year taken together amount to only a minuscule fraction of the likely millions of times per year in which police talk to people or question them with nothing but boring civility all around. Even if we account for a certain percentage of police encounters with unwarranted police aggression not being reported or going viral, it would still be a tiny minority compared to the vast majority that go the other way.
I mention this because just the other day in a YT documentary I saw about a woman who disappeared under an air of mystery (link below for the curious) and it incidentally showed body cam footage of her own interaction under unusual circumstances with a police officer who could have easily been much more suspicious considering how he found her shortly before she disappeared, for reasons unrelated to that cop. It was the picture of politeness. Because the focus of the documentary wasn't highlighting police aggression, it gave a glimpse into how many recorded police encounters go in situations where they don't later become the focus of social media threads about bad cops.
None of the above is to excuse cops acting badly, or excuse how often they get used for shitty, pseudo-authoritarian social control, or to claim that they don't have too much authority to get away with it when it does happen, but it's useful for perspective on how often these things happen and how likely they really are for most normal contexts (you not being someone doing something notably obnoxious, not being in situations where you're likely to interact with especially suspicious cops, etc)
Also, i'm sort of excluding ICE from the above. At least lately, those guys seem to be pervasive dicks by wide mandate in general.
I'm not reading that, but I know many people who have been handcuffed and detained for non-violent, non-aggressive transgressions. It is normal operating procedure in the US (but not the rest of the Western world).
I do see there undoubtedly is a lot of crazy policing happening but I also am sure a lot of it is because those types of incidents are what get the views. I know there are countless police interactions where they are kind and chill but that is boring to watch. Not saying the violence should get a pass just that I believe there are many good officers out there that do address issues calmly and are not quick to jump someone.
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It's hard to tell if handling cooperative person in handcuffs is more convenient than without handcuffs.
No one is cooperating once they are cuffed if they have one iota of sense. Suddenly, the state is their enemy and their only concern should be contacting a lawyer.
If I were Hyundai and had the cash to spare I would close and tear down the facility.
Why? They can just lock the doors.
I honestly don't think this administration wants economic allies
1. Lose all the allies, become isolated.
2. Allies are less powerful, the world starts another world war
3. Get sneakily attacked
4. Win the war by entering when everyone is already spent out after fighting for several years.
5. Everyone likes USA because they helped.
6. Profit.
Looks like history is about to make another turn of the same wheel, but this time WW1 is Russia (+China) <-> Ukraine (+EU). Russia will be rebuilt by China and start another round to get back on EU.
This. Still it's not that simple anymore...
> 1. Lose all the allies, become isolated.
UK will stay. And 50%+ of Poles, maybe more. Also this time Sounth America won't allow isolation - a) they think promises from China are worth something; b) they may have hopes of looting richer lands, russian-wave style, streaight into bullet streams...
> 2. Allies are less powerful, the world starts another world war
Read: Germans explode again... And just looks like their rulers are owned by external enemies working on exactly that - in what other country womans can be mass ripped by some new arrivals ?? And gov just do censorship... Look like society preparation for unrest...
> 3. Get sneakily attacked
And make some dead americans by attacking something stupid ? Becose stories are important for top star generals...
Also "spinners" already started to be distibuted country wide...
And when Germans attacked Poland in '39 they had lists of "intelligence" - like teachers and priests and now we have social media...
> 4. Win the war by entering when everyone is already spent out after fighting for several years.
Only if US will NOT be attacked at the start...
> 5. Everyone likes USA because they helped.
Certainly not loosing side :)
> 6. Profit.
Yeah. If only US will be on winners side and not in bigger isolation.
But times changed. Nukes. Balistic missiles. Baloons with viruses. Rare earth metals are basic need. Termovision cameras on the ground and satelites (at least in first stage). Mr. Musk saying: Anywhere on Earth, 40 minutes, 9 million :)
And nukes again. Pretty much exclude all owners from bigger conflict...
And history learned - maybe official WW3 part will not pour out of Europe this time. But in this case it won't be a "world" war. Or maybe "war" will be somewhere else...
Except that this time, Trump's starting out by also wrecking the readiness of our military in a number of ways.
Make no mistake: This is not grand strategy. It's grandstanding. It's not part of some 5D chess plan. It's just Trump and his ilk being petty, racist bullies, trying desperately to show that they're "more manly" than anyone else.
If the threat comes to your shores, people will heroically start doing "the right thing after all other ways were exhausted". High wages for military factory workers will magically appear because they are heroes etc. Last time it took about 3 years to start mass-producing weapons, it will probably still take same amount this time, but it will be done.
It's fascistic nihilism. They want brown people out of the country and money in their own pockets. If their out group suffers, what does it matter? If the economy crashes, or US world standing falls, who cares? What use is American idealism anyway?
s/economic//g
It was probably good for white nationalists like Trump, his party and their voters though. They also don't seem to be interested in doing what's best for business.
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How's Brexit working for you?
It’s good for the fossil fuel industry and that’s why it was done.
> It’s good for the fossil fuel industry and that’s why it was done
How? (I’m really trying here.)
They raided a battery manufacturing facility. That's what I guess GP meant.
The Koreans are so generous! I don't think that any other country would be so polite if they were humiliated like this [1] after they made such big investments in your country. I don't get the feeling that many in the US understand that you are the one at disadvantage when you disrespect your investors. Is it because the US has never faced a diplomatic backlash before? At the minimum, the aggrieved party would hold the rest of the investments hostage and force you into making major concessions.
Anyway, the way ICE treats immigrants is going to cost the US dearly, both in monetary and in reputational terms. The US may not care much about the dignity of the foreigners, but their parent countries do. The charade about 'illegal immigrants' won't work anymore, because clearly that's not what's happening. It's like the foreigners are targeted to prove a political point to the domestic audience. ICE is acting like a rogue force and is really asking to be outlawed and sanctioned internationally. I want to see how long the rest of the world will remain restrained before they've had enough of the ICE abuse.
[1] The news I got from a US source (don't remember which one) was that all of them except one were on valid temporary work visas to set up the plant and train the new US staff who would take over later. That one exception was also on a valid visa, but 'productive job' was not allowed. But he was there for training, so no violations there either.
> I don't think that any other country would be so polite if they were humiliated like this
Everyone is exercising diplomatic niceties [1].
However, we have all come to realise the USA can no longer be trusted as a good faith partner. The USA has even managed to piss off Canada. And lets be honest, you have got to work really hard to piss off the Canadians.
[1] British subtlety at it's finest... official photos of His Majesty The King meeting Big Z, the latter appropriately dressed for meeting royalty. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/volodymyr-zelensky-...
> The USA has even managed to piss off Canada. And lets be honest, you have got to work really hard to piss off the Canadians.
Agreed. That's so comically tragic!
> I want to see how long the rest of the world will remain restrained before they've had enough of the ICE abuse.
The rest of the world will remain restrained indefinitely. Yes, populist politics requires voicing outrage at this, but otherwise this is more a good thing than a bad thing.
Because salaries in the US in the real sector of the economy are often 5 times higher than even in other developed countries. So there is a huge drain of the best specialists to the US from all over the world. And no country wants to lose its best professionals.
I believe that ICE's own actions will remedy that situation too.
No violations then what's going on here? Are they sticking to the training missions or actually just doing the work and brushing aside the trainees to maintain leverage? That cannot be tolerated IMO.
> No violations then what's going on here?
Here is the latest information I have from the AP article linked below:
> U.S. authorities have said that those detained during the raid were “unlawfully working” at the plant. But Charles Kuck, a lawyer representing several of the detained South Koreans, said the “vast majority” of the workers from South Korea were doing work that is authorized under the B-1 business visitor visa program.
Needless to say, the former party's credibility is a bit suspect now. I hope you remember the people who were trafficked to the El Salvadorian prison CECOT in the name of Tren de Aragua. Evidence in that case is still a joke. So in this case, we have to assume that at least the 'vast majority' of detained Koreans were there legally. ICE doesn't even distinguish between an immigrant and a citizen. What hopes do legal immigrants have?
> Are they sticking to the training missions or actually just doing the work and brushing aside the trainees to maintain leverage?
What were those 'trainees' going to do in an unfinished plant? Don't they need some equipment from Korea to be commissioned before they can do something?
From the article again:
> "It’s not like these are long-term workers. When you build a factory or install equipment at a factory, you need technicians, but the United States doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work. If that’s not possible, then establishing a local factory in the United States will either come with severe disadvantages or become very difficult for our companies. They will wonder whether they should even do it"
> That cannot be tolerated IMO.
Did you have any issues tolerating the 350 B$ Korean investment that came along with it? From the article:
> During his meeting with Rubio, Cho also proposed the creation of a joint South Korea-U.S. working group to introduce a new visa category for workers from the Asian nation, according to Cho’s ministry.
This is all backwards! When a foreign nation makes such a massive investment in your country, it's usually the host nation that takes the initiative to resolve all such issues. That too, well before the work starts. Here the US authorities are behaving as if the Koreans should be grateful to them for giving them the opportunity and privilege to invest in their territory! South Korea isn't some backward squalor nation for its citizens to want to illegally sneak into the US. It's as if 'Have you ever thanked us?' is the US government motto! Or is it that the 'main character syndrome' is the national epidemic of the US? This is not how other nations deal with each other!
[1] https://apnews.com/article/georgia-immigration-raid-hyundai-...
I happen to know someone well who works for a Korean Conglomerate building industrial/car batteries in the US.
When you do construction work, or operate the production line it has to be done by American Labour.
The visas they have only cover setup, repair and education of the production line.
At that LG/Hyundai factory they were using Korean contractors for construction. So there was some breaking of the terms of the visa for at least some of the people.
However, ICE didn't need to arrest everyone. All they needed to do was send a warning. These companies don't want the trouble, they would comply.
Now you have many Koreans very upset. And people in my friends company are now scared to go to America even though they are management.
It's not good for anyone, it's just so short sighted!
It used to be a wink wink agreement between the US and Korea. Yes, Korean companies break rules, but a lot of it tends to be directly related to the terms put in by the government. There’s milestones and deadlines that need to be met to ensure money gets released. But we all know what happens to construction projects here. There were some people definitely working on wrong visas.
https://www.ft.com/content/c677b9aa-2e89-4feb-a56f-f3c8452b3...
Anyone who has worked for a larger than mom and pop company outside the US, who has been sent to the US by their company for some reason knows that the legality of their presence and type of visa needed is top of mind. Triple so when the company is as large as Hyundai. For certain they retain a specialist US immigration law firm.
Authoritarians love strong message optics, for better or worse or much worse.
> I happen to know someone well who works for a Korean Conglomerate building industrial/car batteries in the US.
You could just say you know someone at LG ;)
> However, ICE didn't need to arrest everyone. All they needed to do was send a warning. These companies don't want the trouble, they would comply.
The point is to reach quotas. Warnings and voluntary exits don't help with those.
> Now you have many Koreans very upset.
FWIW, the reaction among Koreans (i.e. in korea), especially the younger generation, has been quite mixed. Among age 20-39, only a minority expressed being "disappointed with the US' excessive measures". Among the older groups, the majority did react negatively.
> Among age 20-39, only a minority expressed being "disappointed with the US' excessive measures."
huh? why??
The most common reasons among those who did not express disappointment:
- They'd want the very same thing to happen if the roles were reversed: foreign companies in Korea bringing in hundreds of people on questionable visas
- The companies knew exactly what they were doing, that it was illegal and that they were at risk. This had been coming for some time. Cases had been starting to pop up of those trying to do multiple consecutive visa runs (blatant abuse, but often instructed by these same companies) being denied.
- The employees who get sent on these business trips are often privileged and rich, so some take pleasure in seeing them not get away with something for once.
- Korean young MAGAs who love the concept of deportation and the current US gov
Agree. Worse than short sighted.
Blindly foolish.
S Korea is an ally, treat them as such.
They're building a factory in the US. Be nice!
Personally I'd be very careful about traveling to the US office for a two week visit these days on an ESTA or similar Visa Waiver.
Historically people have done it and a blind eye has been turned, but with the climate these days you want to be 100% in compliance of your Visa conditions.
Here in Australia, we've received org-wide approval to just not go to the US if we cannot help it. It's not worth the risk.
Traditionally the to do work trips into the USA for Australia and other USA allies was the ESTA visa waiver that these Koreans were on.
From reading about what happened here it seems the South Koreans were on that visa waiver for their work trips. A lot of people claiming "it doesn't allow you to work" yet the visa waiver has a long long list of various types of work it does allow and it's pretty broad.
So it seems the ESTA isn't worth anything anymore. You can't go to the USA without a very very heavyweight working VISA. Ok. No more trade shows, conferences or general business trips.
> So it seems the ESTA isn't worth anything anymore. You can't go to the USA without a very very heavyweight working VISA.
There really isn’t much between a B-1 and an H1-B, so there isn’t much of a path forward here. That factory isn’t getting built until the USA re-instates previous exceptions.
My US-based company has the same policy for all international travel now to avoid any incidents coming back into the US.
Maybe time to short some US airline stocks since historically international business travel accounted for a decent chunk of overall airline revenues.
US is on my no-fly list for many years now and most likely will stay there till my death.
Same, and I’m from Canada. Lots of international flights route thru the US. I have to make extra effort to avoid. Been doing that for 10 years. Just not worth the risk.
Isn’t that somewhat simplified by doing immigration for the USA at Canadian airports? In that case, I’d guess they could say no at the airport but you aren’t really at risk of being deported since you are still in Canada, and there are no emigration checks in American airports.
Not simplified much. By the silly rules in the US, during the transfer you must go thru immigration and even get your bags and check them in again.
Yes there’s pre clearance in Canada. This would ease the border a bit. But there’s still a risk that something somewhere will go wrong.
The main reason I stoped routing thru the US 10 years ago wasn’t ICE. I didn’t like the way border agents were rude and disrespectful. I felt like I was being interrogated every time and didn’t feel welcomed there. So I decided to vote with my wallet and simply not fly thru.
Oh, only on the inbound trip, outbound from Canada should check thru. Too bad America and Canada don’t do transfer zones like most non-Chinese airports in Asia and Europe.
Same. And many were glad when our head office moved from Houston to Madrid (22,000 employees)
Seems extreme.
Why? There are tons of reports of individuals getting stuck in detention for weeks for extremely minor or even no actual immigration offenses. I’ve traveled extensively across africa including some pretty shady countries and I now feel that I have to put the US in the same bucket: avoid, if not absolutely necessary, due to risks outside of my own control.
I mean, there’s literally hundreds of countries, why would I go somewhere with the risk of being arbitrarily detained, if I can help it at all?
I mean, unless you have a pressing reason to go there... there are lots of other places you could go which are less likely to randomly detain you.
Isn't it how it supposed to be? Valid Visa -> free to enter No valid Visa -> should be behind the bars
If you've ever traveled abroad and replied to a work email or worked on anything at your hotel there's a chance you violated visa rules in some form. Very easy to find a violation if you want to find one, following the letter and not the spirit of the law.
It was an ESTA, and yes, technically working from the US with an ESTA isn't allowed. I'm not invited to the CES since I've left the first company I worked for in 2020, but I definitely would have cancelled all my plans to do so until this is clarified. If I needed a full visa to get there, I probably wouldn't have.
Also that's not what happened. The ones responsible for the breach, IE Hyundai execs and management who took care of the visa waivers and asked their employees to setup production lines were not arrested, only the people who had little to say about capital allocation were. In a way, Hyundai investors would have been a better target than their workers since they choose the execs who chose to build in the USA.
Why behind bars? Isn't the obvious step to deport them?
The first step is to get them in front of a judge.
No, it’s to imprison them and have someone yell at them in English to sign a piece of paper written in English that says you agree to be deported.
The comment specifically mentions visa waivers and ESTA
That a gross misunderstanding of immigration laws, considering nearly all immigration violations are civil matters, not criminal.
No, probably not.
Thats disgusting.
America can’t build ships. Including warships.
In a war of attrition with China, guess which ally we’ll have to depend on to make our shit?
(Hint [1].)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_shipbuil...
They are also supplying Poland with the tanks it needs to defend itself.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/emerging/poland-signs-contra...
South Korea is way too close to China to be relied on n a war against China. Only if we have an overwhelming advantage and the war is mostly a defensive one for China, but I seriously doubt that would be the case.
> Korea is way too close to China to be relied on n a war against China
Enemy of thy enemy.
We protect Korea from the Kims. We also buy from them and treat them with dignity. Break those pillars and yes, China controls Asia and the Pacific in a way Yamamoto could have only dreamed of.
> and the war is mostly a defensive one for China
China holding Taiwan is a direct threat to the security of Seoul.
I get that, I just don’t think the front line will be so close to China. Even in the Korean War non-regular Chinese troops were able to take Seoul…twice. The country just isn’t very defensible in a war with China, not defensible enough to have it continue making ships uninterrupted.
> Enemy of thy enemy.
Some enemies are more beneficial to left unattended. Realistically, there are almost no scenarios in which it would be advantageous for Korea to enter a war against China.
> We protect Korea from the Kims. We also buy from them and treat them with dignity
Still not worth a war with China.
> Break those pillars and yes, China controls Asia and the Pacific
Still not worth changing sides to China
> there are almost no scenarios in which it would be advantageous for Korea to enter a war against China
Correct. This is where having America in the theatre, and in particular Taiwan, benefits Seoul.
Sort of like how Poland benefits from Putin being bogged down in Russia.
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Are you saying an established beachhead right in front of an enemy is a bad idea!?
It’s a great idea if you are at the end of the war and need a final push. It’s a bad idea if you are in for a long war of attrition.
We could build them. We can invest. It doesn’t have to come from outside. But no matter what, catching up to China’s volume is not possible for many years.
It would require phasing out the Jones Act. Nobody is doing that.
It would also require not making American steel and energy uniquely expensive, and American industry uninvestable.
"If we don't continue outsourcing all of our know-how and industry, we won't be able to solve the problems caused by outsourcing all of our know-how and industry!"
Same as the solution to declining birthrates is to import more people to also not have children.
Neither addresses the problem just provides a way to ignore it for longer.
I once flew to the US for a week on ESTA to attend a few meetings (pre-COVID), but I mostly just did my regular developer work in the US office. By today’s standards, would I have been shackled for that?
That's what it seems like. Some people here disagree with you, but I can add anecdata that my employer insisted I do no coding on such a VISA.
Even team members visiting from Canada were told very explicitly to not say they're coming to the US to "work" but rather for a business trip. But practically of course everyone do some amount of actual work. From checking their email / slack to doing some white boarding designs etc. If those aren't even allowed, then I don't see how any in person team meetings can be conducted.
No: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/business... >A foreigner traveling to the United States to conduct temporary business must have a visitor visa (B) unless qualifying for entry under the Visa Waiver Program.
Examples of temporary business include:
Attending business meetings or consultations Attending a business convention or conference Negotiating contracts
The meeting is fine. The developer work is not.
Right but the purpose of the trip was to attend the business meeting and the person on the trip was also conducting their regular duties as a developer as well.
Attending meetings and conferences are rarely the main duties of an employee but they are the main purpose of trips.
Similarly to how, if you go to Mexico on a Tourist Visa but answer a critical work phone call you would not be breaching the terms of your visa as the purpose of your trip is still vacation. However if you rent a house for 5 months and spend most of that time doing developer work, I think that the authorities there might be a little upset.
From what I've read it's still an ESTA violation. When I went to the CES a few years ago my goal was clearly work, not vacation, and I did work from my hotel. I should have been arrested and put in chains, then publicly shamed for that I guess, even though my employer asked me to.
Was only planning a single family trip in the US in the next few years anyway, and Trump nicely gave me an argument to visit the Carribbean instead (because yes, I intend to work a few days from my vacation,I have to when I take more than a month off).
Can you provide a link to where you read that? I can't find anything that states that, nor can I find any news where that has happened.
Is it "work" if it's done on behalf of the foreign company? It doesn't interact with anything in the US; people or taxes, so it has no impact on the US labor market or taxes.
Not that I agree but Governments take a very nuanced view on what they consider impact. Remember, growing your own corn for feed outside of the government quota was considered as having an impact on "Interstate Commerce".
In a hypothetical; If you were employed by an Canadian company, doing internal tech support and then you then move to Belize because you hate the cold. No interaction with anything in Belize.
The Belize government might say, "Not so, you moved here and are taking advantage of our infrastructure, societal governance, etc. but are not helping pay for it." Furthermore, natives of Belize may be upset that because you have a higher income than the native population you are affecting the cost of goods(not one person individually but if 1000 people with high income show up and are all looking to rent houses, the rental rates would rise both due to demand and the ability to pay.)
If we think about things especially from the second point of view, it would be very bad for a country to allow unlimited rich foreigners to come into their country and live there; Even if they are contributing by purchasing local goods and services, they are in competition with local workers as well; They might even stunt the economy if it becomes reliant on them and then they all move out suddenly; and the foreigners would also start shaping the culture of the country as well, which could be neocolonialism depending on your view of things.
EDIT to add: I like the idea of being able to live wherever I want to but it is also important to consider the views of those who are in those countries as well. I think that some(most?) people from Europe and North America don't have a strong national identity and don't see any value in such things. But there are people in other countries that do take a lot of pride in where they are from and how long their family has lived there. Some of this pride is what builds the culture and the local charm that those without enjoy but it becomes a sort of "We are destroying the thing we love by trying to experience it" situation.
What color is your skin?
If there's a photo op opportunity I'm sure you would be.
Yes.
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Has anyone disputed the validity of the visas of the workers which were deported? My understanding is that SK citizens cannot get E-4, so people came to the US and worked on a visa that didn’t allow working, and the US deported the people violating visa rules in a not nice way?
Im guessing this is the case or else the SK sources would be calling out that these workers were following visa rules?
In at least one case, a worker had a valid visa: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/10/hyundai-fact...
A valid visa possibly but not one valid for the type of work they are doing, which would have required an H1B. The article doesn’t seem to address this head on.
Did you read the leaked memo specifically ‘he has not violated his visa’ part?
Its right there in the link the parent gave. As in they had a visa and ice acknowledged no violation of the terms of that visa in very plain english.
I can’t really evaluate or trust that part - it’s a redacted quote from some unspecified doc from an unspecified source. My point is that building factories generally requires a different visa because ESTA and also B1 have many restrictions. The fact that it says B1/B2 in there undermines its credibility - one is a travel visa not a work one, and it doesn’t make sense to mention them interchangeably.
My B1/B2 visa literally says B1/B2 on it.
I have stamps from the US border that literally say B1/B2 on them.
If anything is undermining anyone's credibility here, it is not the article doing that.
"In practice, the two visa categories are usually combined and issued as a "B-1/B-2 visa" valid for a temporary visit for either business or pleasure, or a combination of the two."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_visa
There's also a picture of such a visa.
It looks to me like they may have been in breach of their visa depending on the work they were doing:
A B-1 / B-2 visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows foreign nationals to travel to the United States temporarily for business (B-1), tourism (B-2), or a mix of both (B1/B2). https://www.boundless.com/immigration-resources/b-1-b-2-visi...
B1 Visa Subcategories and Special Cases
While the B-1 visa generally restricts employment and formal education, there are some exceptions under specific circumstances. These exceptions aren’t separate visa categories but annotations considered by the U.S. consular officers during the visitor visa application process.
Here’s a closer look at these special B-1 subcategories:
B-1 after-sales service visa: Companies selling equipment to the U.S. can leverage this visa to send assemblers for on-site service orders. Think of it as temporary technical support. These assemblers can perform tasks like installation, maintenance, and training, but the assembly work must be done by U.S. personnel.
B-1 in place of H-1B visa (temporary project visa): Some professionals might be eligible for a B-1 visa for temporary projects in specific scenarios. This option can be viable when an H-1B visa, typically used for specialty occupations, might be challenging to obtain.
B-1 instead of H-3 visa (short-term training): Under certain conditions, the B-1 category can be used for brief in-house training sessions or further employee education. It allows for skills development without needing a dedicated H-3 visa designed for trainee positions.
IMPORTANT! These B1 business visa exceptions have strict requirements. Working with an immigration service provider or lawyer is highly recommended to determine if a particular B-1 visa category fits your situation.
https://www.immigrationdirect.com/guides/b1-b2-visitor-visa/
From the friendly link, ICE itself says he did not violate his visa conditions in any way:
From statements made and queries in law enforcement databases, [redacted] has not violated his visa; however, the Atlanta Field Office Director has mandated [redacted] be presented as a Voluntary Departure. [Redacted] has accepted voluntary departure despite not violating his B1/B2 visa requirements.”
The Guardian offers no evidence for this. Just a vague claim of some doc leaked from someone. But even that text doesn’t seem credible. Why would it say “not violating his B1/B2 visa requirements”? Which is it? B1 is a business visa. B2 is for tourism. It doesn’t make sense to claim they aren’t violating the requirements of these two very different visas.
They're not very different visas; they're very often (always?) issued as B1/B2 visa.
Why would someone sent here by their company for work reasons have both?
They don't have "both", it's literally (usually) issued as single visa sticker whenever you apply for either.
You seem to try to make a bigger distinction between B1 and B2 than the US government does.
Are you saying the form you fill out doesn’t ask you the purpose of your visit?
"Purpose of your visit" in the context of a multi-entry visa with a ten year validity period, is a rather nebulous term.
I don't really remember, it's been 10y since I last had to fill out a DS-160, but I don't think so.
You probably will get asked about the purpose of your _first visit_ in the interview though.
Even setting that all aside, B1/B2 are _obviously_ very often combined together.
"I'm going for a conference, and then I'm going to do some sightseeing on the weekend" is something that, under some very strict and specific reading of the law, would require a B1/B2 visa for example.
If you want to be extremely strict in reading the law, you can't really attend a conference on a B1, and sightseeing would require a B2.
Right.
I don't trust the government and if they are in fact violating the law than I hope that there is recourse, I would bet however that there is a clause somewhere that says that they can rescind status if they like.
However The Guardian's evidence is a couple quotes from a leaked document, not a scan of the leaked document.
We do however learn the worker was from SFA: https://www.kedglobal.com/korean-smes/newsView/ked2022050900...
So probably not doing construction work as some of the claims and only arrived in June so not close to the start term of the B1/B2 6 mo allowed duration.
The B-1/B-2 visa is a very common visa type that allows both business and tourism.
> My understanding is that SK citizens cannot get E-4
Nobody can, because it doesn’t exist. The E-4 visa mentioned in the article is a proposed new classification that a bill pending in Congress would, if enacted, create just for Korean workers, similar to the existing E-3 classification for Australians.
Would that be done by congress? I thought all nonimmigrant-intent work visas like that were written into treaties.
Yes, by Congress, even if and when required by a treaty or other international agreement. Look up §101(a)(15) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, codified at 8 USC §1101(a)(15), for all the nonimmigrant classifications:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1101
8 USC §1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) has H-1B, 8 USC §1101(a)(15)(E)(iii) has E-3, and so on.
A treaty is not self-executing under US law unless it is both ratified by 2/3 of the Senate pursuant to the Treaty Clause of the Constitution and also contains language expressing that it will be self-executing upon ratification, in which case it has the same domestic legal effect as an Act of Congress. See Medellín v. Texas, 552 U.S. 491 (2008), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medell%C3%ADn_v._Texas for a recent SCOTUS precedent about this.
Many agreements which are treated internationally as treaties, including most US free trade agreements, are not considered as such for purposes of US constitutional law; many others are not self-executing even when they are ratified through the Treaty Clause procedure. These only have effect in US domestic law when implemented by implementing legislation passed by Congress, or to whatever extent the executive branch handles implementation through regulations, policies, or similar which it already has the authority to promulgate without new legislation.
They’re written into US immigration law, possibly having been negotiated in a treaty earlier.
Problem is the current visas are fairly vague and ambiguous. B1/B2 visa allows for business travel for things like negotiations, conferences and such. You can't "work", but the definition and the practical enforcement of work is nebulous.
For instance, here is a category listed by the government explicitly for "Engineer(s) install, service or repair commercial or industrial equipment or machinery sold by a non-U.S. company to a U.S. buyer".
Now if someone travels to the US to meet with a team here but also checks email / slack, or write some code together, is that work and in violation of the scope of the visa? If so, what's the alternative? Can't get any actual work visa since those require employment and being paid in the US.
I've not seen any good summary of whether any/some/all of those arrested had actually committed any sort of immigration violation. I would love to see some actual truth about it.
There's definitely a dispute over whether at least some of the people detained were operating within the bounds of their visa's: https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/lawyer-says...
It's also very noteworthy that these people are still being imprisoned in the US on Donald Trump's orders - Trump having personally prevented the repatriation of the Koreans to Korea today. There is absolutely no reason to believe that we have the full story, or that the Korean government, or the Korean's individual friends/families/represetnatives feel free to speak freely as America seemingly holds their citizens hostage. To say that lack of further public disputes is proof that there is not more to dispute seems false to me.
> Trump having personally prevented the repatriation of the Koreans to Korea today
Can’t see past the paywall but what did he do? Prevent the charter flight from landing?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/south-korea-nationals-r...
> South Korean officials originally hoped the Korean Air plane would leave Atlanta as early as Wednesday afternoon local time, shortly after it arrived from Seoul. But the foreign ministry said its departure was likely to be delayed “due to circumstances on the U.S. side,” and a spokesperson for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport later said that the charter flight had been canceled.
> At a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington on Wednesday, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun learned that Trump had ordered the suspension of the repatriation process in order to discuss with South Korea whether its detained nationals — all of them skilled workers who were helping to set up an electric vehicle battery plant — should remain in the U.S. to continue their work rather than being sent home.
Wow. Sometimes it feels like I’m living in an Onion timeline.
That is a bit hyperbolic to say they are being held hostage, the government has accused them of a crime and is holding them while they are given due process.
We can debate the validity of the government's claim, I have seen an article which says that the workers were on B1/B2 Visa which has strict requirements for what is allowed from what I have read but also says the government in it's internal report also stated no crime was committed.
Which countries just repatriate those they accuse of crimes rather than prosecute?
No - there is no due process or criminal charges at play here. The government detained them per immigration law in order to deport them, for the sake of argument lawfully. The government arranged to repatriate them. Then in order to attempt to negotiate a business deal Donald Trump ordered them not repatriated, and instead to be continued to be held in US custody without trial, without criminal charges, and without even the suggestion that the purpose was to charge them criminally. Rather the explicit purpose was to attempt to negotiate a business deal where they would remain working in the US.
Holding people in custody in order to negotiate a business deal is the definition of hostage taking.
I think there feeling is, you say you want us to build our products in the U.S. but then our essential workers aren't allowed in so it's an impossible demand.
It’s my understanding that a lot of them were on B-1 visas.
But South Korean are eligible for ESTA program.
IIRC, US embassies in eligible countries are usually very picky about issuing B-1 visas. They assume ESTA works in most cases, so you need a strong reason to apply for B-1.
Yeah bringing in people on a tourists visa would have been unthinkable at any place I've ever worked.
The ESTA visa waiver which is the easiest way into the USA for allied nations specifically allows meetings, consultation, training and states that installation of advanced equipment is allowed under that visa.
The question being asked by the parent is if they stepped outside the boundaries of that visa waiver.
When I worked at Salesforce Japan, I went to conferences in the US. I always honestly said it was for business when entering the country. I spent nearly the whole time at the office, and answered emails from customers and clients.
No one asked about visas. I didn't think that was an issue since I really was there for a week for a business conference, but maybe it was? After all, technically it was a "Tourist" visa.
In the end though, SFDC keeps almost all of its technical talent in the US. If the government really got annoying, they probably would have stuck to the local talent and forgotten about the rest of us.
The thing is, that ESTA thing everyone calling American "tourist visa" is not an actual tourist visa. It's a "visa waiver" for "visitors" and basically the US border security recommended option for these business guys.
Technically there are lots of restrictions and actual commercial visas are sometimes required, like you've been to sanctioned countries in the past, or if you're engaging in businesses locally like purchasing materials to export for resale(not even B-1 allows that?), but it's all kind of arbitrary.
There are more options than "tourist" and "working" visa. Your message is significantly oversimplifying it. Until we know what they were actually doing at work (really, not claimed by ice), we won't know how valid their stay was.
None of them were actually on tourist visas from what I heard, so you can be confident in your unthinkable situations.
It was a clear violation, the rest of this is just posturing for politics. Most of the people had come on the wrong visa, knowingly. So either the company lied, or the employees are lying, or both.
>Leaked Ice document shows worker detained in Hyundai raid had valid visa
>At least one of the Korean workers swept up in a huge immigration raid on a Hyundai Motor factory site in Georgia last week was living and working legally in the US, according to an internal federal government document obtained by the Guardian.
>Officials then “mandated” that he agree to be removed from the US despite not having violated his visa.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/10/hyundai-fact...
>According to the file written by an agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), an agency within Ice, the man entered the US “with a valid B1/B2 visa”, which allows for some business-related activities and tourism. He was at the Hyundai factory as a contractor with a South Korean company.
I did some research on B1/B2 Visa's it looks like the work allowed is rather restricted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45207369
"worker", singular. And the rest?
Is the blatant violation of the rights and dignity of at least one person not alarming enough for you? Shouldn't the rights of individuals be respected? And can a society that willingly turns a blind eye to such incidents still be called a constitutional state?
I don't entirely disagree with your position, but I'd still like to know. Or to put it another way:
When the media so blatantly cherry-pick what they choose to report and what they turn a blind eye to, can such a misinformed society really be called a democracy?
The entire crusade against "illegal immigrants" in the US is built on misinformation. Pretty much everything the Trump administration has said about, well, everything, has been a thinly veiled lie.
Its not misinformation vs the governments word. Its misinformation vs populist pseudo-fascist misinformation.
If the government is telling you or us that these workers did not have valid visas, that probably means that at least some definitely did have valid visas.
> It was a clear violation
Can you show us the proof?
> Most of the people had come on the wrong visa
Can you show us the proof?
> knowingly
Can you show us the proof?
You're very sure about it without all the details being known and people possibly still wanting to get out safely, without causing further conflicts by speaking out. I've done enough travel / border chats that if I ended up in their situation, I'd be keen to shut up and get out as soon as possible, regardless of my legal status.
Exactly! But now they’re going to claim special treatment, avoid responsibility, and show their true attitudes beneath the surface: they don’t respect you or your laws.
This is not caused by Trump; its latent attitude being surfaced.
> they don’t respect you or your laws.
You have to ignore just about every other part of the story to arrive at this breathless conclusion.
Let’s remember that for this project alone Hyundai invested more money than 99% of us will ever see into this country, and more sum labor hours than any of our individual lives. That’s not what disrespect looks like.
Maybe their visas were not in order so ok enforce that. But not by having their engineers perp walked on live television.
As a side note, if we are going to judge the Hyundai engineers then we must also believe that Elon Musk should have been deported due to his well known early career visa violations. or be damned as hypocrites.
So even tho they broke the law, their treatment was unfair because ... money? Got it. And the embarrassment of being recognized for the crime they committed? Those poor souls - true injustice!
Their treatment was unfair because ICE is a domestic terrorism organization and they got fucking propaganda paraded on live television.
Look around you. Is this really the US you want to be living in? Are you really so pathetic as to be proud of this?
What kind of people do we want to be? Do we really want to be cruel cunts and wave around a "well it's technically legal!!1!" flag? Is that who YOU want to be? Is that how the US should treat allies which invest billions into our economy?
This will likely hit tourism from SK as well, which is already down 15%.
“Until now, the US was not in the position of requesting investment from us. But now, we hold the power as investors, and the US must respond to our demands.” Korean legislator.
Many Americans don't realize how badly Trump's bullying approach is backfiring internationally.
They don’t care. Social media has convinced them that this leads to high paying jobs for every do-nothing jagoff despite it not longer being the 1960s and nearly every good job requires specialized training of some degree.
Our immigration system was nightmare before Trump and it’s only going to get worse because no one in this admin has any real intention of fixing it for everyone’s benefit.
This is not caused by Trump pushing back against against these countries exploiting the United States. These countries already held these attitudes, now they’re just saying it in English.
I smell a digital service tax coming on all the FANG shmang companies who have been making bank off our allies.
I don't see how Zuckerberg, Bezos, or anyone in the tech industry is going to come out of this unscathed with this kind of attitude prevalent in the tech industry. Maybe they think either there will be no consequences or they can make enough money off of the US market alone.
Exactly how did South Korea exploit the United States?
You can easily check who exploits whom by looking at trade deficit. US got goods and services from every other country in the world in exchange for freshly printed paper. For many decades now.
The US immigration system is an overcomplicated mess, and seemingly no one in government wants to change it. Maybe change will happen now.
Are there details on what visas Hyundai needed they couldn't get? L-1A/B for sending experts or management would make sense but I'm not sure there's any real issue getting those, especially not in 2023 when the plant was started.
They keep referring to the workers as contractors, which is a bit ambiguous as it is used for both people doing construction work or people hired for outside technical expertise.
There were here on B1/B2 Visas according to the reporting, which has a 6 month duration and rather strict requirements: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45207369
If they were here in the first case of the word, I would say they were definitely in violation. If here for the second case, perhaps not but if they did not get the "B-1 in place of H-1B visa (temporary project visa): Some professionals might be eligible for a B-1 visa for temporary projects in specific scenarios. This option can be viable when an H-1B visa, typically used for specialty occupations, might be challenging to obtain." they may have still been in violation.
There is a visa called a B1 in lieu of an H1B. Its for 6 months max and i have been on it.
Maybe. But that doesn’t excuse Korean companies violating immigration laws. Union workers who reported this and invited the raid have reported that this was a tactic taken to avoid paying local workers.
That's what I've been trying to determine because of all the fake news on both sides...did they actually do anything wrong?
Because if so, this outrage feels a bit "No stop, those aren't the color immigrants we wanted you to round up."
Why would Hyundai trust the competence of local workers? If US workforce was competent enough to build battery factory they would have built it without Hyundai. It's not like US lacks money. It just lacks everything else, including competence and common sense.
It was probably a tactic to get stuff done.
Koreans and the Korean government would have zero time for that excuse if e.g. a Chinese company gives the exact same reasoning to violate visa laws in Korea.
Of course they would, assuming typical dynamics. If Koreans (or anyone) WANTED something from someone else, especially technical investment they can't do themselves, they would move heaven and earth, including look the other way to "excuses" to facilitate.
The issue is US wants via coercion / pressure due to strategic leverages US that has elsewhere on host of "partners". It's not typical courting for investment. US want others who are already reluctant to invest in US on US terms, even if the terms are onerous/broken i.e. the VISA system. US not making it easy, and in fact, unnecessarily hard for political theatre. Countries are investing in US because US took away carrots and added a lot of sticks, which is already different dynamic. Most countries that really want something from someone else has to play nice, give carrots and remove sticks. US/Trump admin thinks otherwise, and maybe it's in position to get away with it. Or maybe investors will bail regardless of how big the stick gets.
If a Chinese company was making a substantial investment in Korea, they would likely not be stupid enough to jeopardize the project over some paperwork.
The citizens would be very unlikely to view it that way, so they'd have to pray it doesn't hit the news.
I'll bet the North Korean government picks up the raid and uses it as propaganda on their state TV, as an example of "How americans treat koreans".
This was pretty predictable. What is also predictable is that it isn't just South Korea that came to that conclusion.
If the US builds a plant in Korea, can it hire Americans hundreds to do the work?
https://www.immigration.go.kr/immigration_eng/1852/subview.d...
Doesn't look like it. Several restrictions on how many (max 5) dependent upon the construction budget.
If Korea selectively needs to bring over skilled workers, there are options. But hundreds?
> If the US builds a plant in Korea, can it hire Americans hundreds to do the work?
No, it absolutely can't. I'm familiar with the Korean visa system, and you're correct.
To start up a factory and train local workers, eventually numbering thousands, in a new industrial process? Hundreds, easily.
Seems like they should have been on an L-B1 visa not a B1/B2 visa if that is what they were doing.
"The L-1B nonimmigrant classification enables a U.S. employer to transfer a professional employee with specialized knowledge relating to the organization’s interests from one of its affiliated foreign offices to one of its offices in the United States. This classification also enables a foreign company that does not yet have an affiliated U.S. office to send a specialized knowledge employee to the United States to help establish one."
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
There is also the B1 in lieu of an H1B
B1 is what these Koreans did have.
B1 is very restricted in the kind of work that can be done and it is claimed that the Hyundai workers have violated the restrictions.
The boiled frog of American democracy has dissolved into a mess but people still think it is a thing.
Nope. South Korea can kick rocks.
A sad thing about these kinds of economic backfires through incompetent, ideological showboating is that Trump could order them in such a way that they utterly ruin the domestic economy, cause massive job losses and miseries for his blue collar base, and these people would still continue to support him while swallowing much of his blame game about the cause of the problems being something else even after years of suffering. People tend towards enormous ideological stickiness when admitting mistaken loyalty means feeling stupid for having condoned its excesses.
I can't count the number of third world countries where local politicians, in power for decades sometimes, depend on exactly the above rules. They abuse their systems in the same ways, say similar lies to their supporters, and keep winning enough votes to stay in power for years or even decades.
The same has been the case of certain democrat and republican party machines in major US cities that went utterly to shit across many election cycles in which the same ideological bases kept winning. It's just a shame that it has to happen at a national level now with similar results brewing.
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I’m also surprised by the comments because the complaint about the illegal work came from unionized American workers, and HN is usually very pro union. I guess the protectionist stance of unions isn’t worth defending if it can be weaponized politically.
> HN is usually very pro union
I had a good laugh at this. I don't think I've ever seen HN be pro union, it's generally more libertarian.
I wonder what is so special about South Korea here. Companies from many other countries invest in the US, seemingly without the same problems. Is South Korea disadvantaged by the visa system, or is it coincidence that this happened here?
I can tell you that Australians travel for work to the USA on the ESTA visa wavier all the time. It specifically states on the form that it allows business travel. The idea that you can't do work trips to the US office on the visa waiver and that the only way to do this is with an extremely heavyweight working visa seems ridiculous.
It's not that the Koreans are the only one's doing this. It's that they were the first to hit by this very new interpretation of the law. Now that this interpretation is public i don't think anyone's going to the US for conferences/trade shows/general business trips for a few years.
ESTA is not the equivalent of a visa. Under the visa waiver program you’re very restricted on the kind of work you can do and how you can be compensated for it. This work was very clearly not in compliance. For example like the B-1 visa, “business meetings” under ESTA refer to passive attendance only, and do not include active business operations or contributions.
Every law has a lot of need for some interpretation. In the past the ESTA Business visa waiver was the recommended way in for short term working trips to the us office. In the past no one really worried to much if they typed a line of code or sent a work email. It’s clearly not in the spirit of the law to enforce too strictly imho.
This new extremely strict interpretation means that the only safe way to travel to the USA for work is on a h1-b or similar heavyweight working visas.
This is fine if you wish to interpret it this strictly. There are of course consequences and as noted by many many non-US people above the ESTA business visa waiver is near worthless under such strict interpretation. Which means no more short term trips to the US office nor conferences or trade shows. The lack of something lighter weight than a full working visa for these sorts of things means the USA is closed for business.
It's not even just heavy weight, you can't even be on a H1B visa unless you're employed and paid by an US employer. So what are you supposed to do? Be on the payroll of the US company for a week, pay US taxes etc?
> The lack of something lighter weight than a full working visa for these sorts of things means the USA is closed for business.
What is “these sorts of things” to you? To me building factories and installing equipment on the factory floor is a different class of work that is generally prohibited under the lighter options like ESTA or a B1 visa. Here is what B1 allows as an example:
Consulting with business associates
Traveling for a scientific, educational, professional or business convention, or a conference on specific dates
Settling an estate
Negotiating a contract
Participating in short-term training
Transiting through the United States: certain persons may transit the United States with a B-1 visa
Deadheading: certain air crewmen may enter the United States as deadhead crew with a B-1 visa
Installing equipment, is, in fact, explicitly called out as allowed under B-1 visa by the State Department: https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/BusinessVisa%20Pu...
If you trust ice it was a flagrant violation. If you don’t trust ice there’s a possibility these were engineers and management doing consultation and training as allowed but were caught up in minor technicalities of new overly strict interpretations of what counts as work.
I think many non-US residents observing this would be on the side of not trusting ice and are now less willing to travel to the USA for a work trip on a visa waiver.
The Koreans had B1 visas.
It is claimed that their work has exceeded the limits of B1.
I suspect (hope?) this lights a fuze to the inevitable realization by the Billionaire Bros that sucking up to the current administration cannot make up for its sheer ineptitude. (to cite a meme I saw: "He bankrupted a casino!! That's like a license to print money!"). And, since we know the billionaires actually run America, maybe this is the harbinger of some changes to the present dynamic that's needed to arrest the ongoing demolition of the The American Way.
Clearly the US wants people to apply for expensive visas when going to CES or defcon. I guarantee you people won't bother.
Which visas? If ESTA / B1 don't work, what other options are there that don't require actual employment in the US?