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Comment by sungchi | Hacker News Reader

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 companies weren’t hiring Americans, which left ICE with little choice but to step in.

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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.

>Doing a raid publicly and loudly puts a lot of current and future investment at risk for very little gain.

The "gain" is the armchair nazis' watching it on the news approval rating and the rest of the population getting acclimatized to the environment. These things are being done for show, to systematically test the boundaries and build consent for future actions by normalizing this kind of activity.

Yeah, one or two sneaky Koreans to help the cultural divide sounds plausibly okay, but an entire factory of undocumented workers? Seems hard to wash this one any way but clean.

Sure, if you don't want companies to build factories in your country, this is the way to go about it.

There are dozens of other ways this could have been handled.

America First! (just don't build factories here that boost the American economy)

Its impossible to build anything at all, if you were to go entirely by the book.

Wasn't the whole point of America being allowed to color outside the lines ?

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.

This happened in Alabama.

Arrest the wrong German executive as part of your "immigration crackdown" and suddenly Mercedes is pulling out of your economy.

Alabama has gone down this road, and I'm not seeing how it will be any better for anyone this time around. People tentatively agreeing with it or not.

If there are so many undocumented laborers we need, then the issue is documentation. Trump is [not exactly endearing himself with SK](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-china...).

Aren't we supposed to be encouraging American manufacturing? Or is the plan to run out Hyundai and make Fords?

> The juice is probably not worth the squeeze, as Arizona and Florida found out.

What is this referring to and where can I read more about this? I may have missed the news.

Because it's necessary for the plant to function and the government has never seen fit to provide a different arrangement for the work to happen and tacitly approved it as a way for this sort of short-term work to happen. They have quotas to meet, these workers helped them fit the quota, so who cares what effects it has.

It probably requires a lot of work and effort to lay it out explicitly, so they don't. It would be better for workers to figure it out, but that's not the administration's style either.

Hopefully the plant doesn't have to shutdown because of this.

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.

No excuse! The neighbor clearly should have paid to train a local worker in fence-fixing for a year or two, and then paid the local worker's wages while fixing the fence, and then let the worker go as they don't need to fix a fence again for some time. Granted that would take two years and tens of thousands of dollars more than the neighbor fixing it themselves, but that's the neighbor's problem. (well, and now the problem of the homeowner with the fence that has to wait 2 more years to get their fence fixed)

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.

Sorry but as a legal immigrant (O1b then Green Card) -- they can easily apply for legal status if there were no possible skilled workers available legally, and locally. My personal barometer calls this unacceptable after.... 10? 20 examples? Almost 500!

But they do not want to immigrate. They want to fly in, set up the factory, and fly back home.

> easily apply for

ok... of course you can easily apply.

But then, when do you get the approval? next day? next week? next month? year?

this is just a big example of US not being "institutionally ready" for Trump's "Made in America" vision.

factories aren't built in a day

they are in china

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...

Haven't you ever turned a blind eye to somebody breaking corporate policy when you know its dumb and helps nobody? This is basically that. This kind of "immigration" is solely helpful but US immigration laws are intentionally obtuse and broken. The only "harm" here is that Hyundai didn't follow the right paperwork while helping build American manufacturing.

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."

Your analysis makes sense. It's 100% justified and a win for the ICE- they certainly "did something". Given the size of the operation all those resources makes sense.

There was a political aspect to this story. It's odd that trump hasn't yet gone scorched earth on SK but he wanted to put them and everyone else on notice. He wants to negotiate from a position of strength.

it depends on who you're pandering to...

Trump is facing some serious backlash from his blue-collar voters over the epstein files...

getting rid of korean workers for local jobs is going to give him some cover.

"little choice"

The obvious followup question is how common it is for a company to bring in hundreds of workers to set up a factory.

I'm aware that there are people with specialized knowledge who travel internationally for that kind of work. What I'm unclear about is the scale.

According to their agreements with Georgia's state govt, factories like this are set to employ 8000+ locals once they're up and running. Given that scale, requiring 1/20 as many specialists working on site to set everything up doesn't seem too farfetched.

>>doesn't seem too farfetched

Far fetched? Its somewhat like a farmer complaining about rain and sun.

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