Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

I mean, Hyundai did play it fast and loose with B1/2 visas and the VWP [0] - which are NOT meant to be used for construction.

If HN detests H1B abuse by consultancies like TCS, then calling out B1/2 and VWP visa abuse by Korean manufacturing firms should be acceptable as well, otherwise it's just white collar hypocrisy.

This factory has had multiple deaths in the past two years due to labor abuse and shoddy safety standards [1][2][3], but kept getting pushed back by political pressure. Given the size of the raid, someone at OSHA most likely gave an "anonymous" tip [4].

91 ambulance calls were made at this factory site over 20 months [5] - well above the average for similar sites [6].

TSMC attempted something similar when spinning up the Chandler fab, but the Biden admin stuck to their guns and pushed back on TSMC.

[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/c677b9aa-2e89-4feb-a56f-f3c8452b3...

[1] - https://www.kherkhergarcia.com/fatal-forklift-accident-batte...

[2] - https://labornotes.org/2025/09/georgia-battery-plant-raid-sp...

[3] - https://www.spaglaw.com/blog/2025/05/worker-killed-by-fallin...

[4] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/12/immigration-...

[5] - https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/local/2025/03/15/peop...

[6] - https://www.ajc.com/news/2025/06/construction-deaths-injurie...

I can assure you, if OSHA raided Hyundai's plant and even arrested managers for unsafe practices, the majority of Koreans would've been like "Yeah fuck Hyundai, serves them right, go America!"

But that's not what happened. And the message seems pretty clear: don't come to the US to work, unless you fancy being treated like a busted drug dealer.

You can't do that and then claim it was about workplace safety. Well, I mean, I guess you can, but the factory workers and investors aren't going to believe you.

Koreans know about work visa rules and immigration status. ADOR reported Hanni as an illegal immigrant when they were having contract disputes with New Jeans due to the whole Min Hee Jin fiasco.

I realize that's kinda dense, but you can google it up yourself. Koreans well understand this type of thing.

Koreans also have the concept of punishment being proportional to offense. You tell Koreans an illegal immigrant worker in Korea was rounded up in chains and stuck in places where they have to take a dump in front of others, at least half of Koreans would say "What the fuck? We are supposed to be better than that!"

Now tell them it wasn't just an ordinary illegal immigrant worker, but a group of, let's say, BMW employees from Germany, building a new car factory in (some Korean city), but apparently they had the wrong visa.

Koreans would say "Have we completely lost our goddamn mind?"

> if OSHA raided Hyundai's plant

They have - multiple times, both under Biden and Trump, as the sources I gave have mentioned. Heck, The Guardian in strongly opposed to the Trump admin and pointed this out too.

> But that's not what happened

That is what happened. The issue was Hyundai would spin up yet another contracting firm when an OSHA incident arose, thus keeping business as usual.

Having masked men with guns and body armor shackle and kidnap workers is not 'calling out visa abuse'.

The Korean government does the exact same thing as ICE, and continues to ignore the Korean constitutional court's ruling on indefinite detention [0][1][2], and immigrant abuse is even worse in Korea than the US [3]

[0] - https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/ngos-urge-un-human-ri...

[1] - https://www.newskorea.ne.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=7205

[2] - https://www.banmuang.co.th/mobile/news/region/424336

[3] - https://www.bbc.com/thai/articles/ckklk4w9w3po

I'll be first to admit that Koreans aren't great at how we treat our immigrant workers, so if you think that's some kind of gotcha, it really isn't.

Yes, the Korean government (regrettably) mistreats workers frequently, but there are domestic organizations inside Korea (such as National Human Rights Commission, which is a part of the government) which frequently point out these issues, and steps are taken to improve situations, though obviously it's not as fast as it should be.

I'm not going to talk about morality because I don't think there's a lot to argue about: hopefully we can all agree that immigrant workers have human rights whether they're here legally or not. I'm talking about practicality.

What kind of idiot invites a multinational corporation to build a factory in its own hometown, and then arrest workers when they show up to build it? Don't tell me that the law should be fair: there's nothing this US government does that shows any semblance of fairness, so we can count that explanation out. The simple truth is, the US government had a ton of other ways to resolve the visa issue. Hell, they could simply have said "You guys have the wrong visa, get out, you have three days." But they did the most over-the-top, comic-villain stuff to "resolve" this problem, there's nothing "law should be equal" about it, and we're left with one burning question:

So does the US want this factory built or not?

> if you think that's some kind of gotcha, it really isn't

It's not supposed to be a gotcha. It's supposed to be "너희 중에 죄 없는 자가 먼저 돌로 치라"

If Korean SPUs can treat Mongolian, Thai, Viet (my SO is Viet and has family who are "trainees"), Nepali, Indonesian, Pinoy, and other migrant workers that way, it is a bit of schadenfreude which I hope will be used to Korean society to better treat migrants.

> What kind of idiot invites a multinational corporation to build a factory in its own hometown, and then arrest workers when they show up to build it

Why couldn't Hyundai and LG file an H-2B [0]? That's the correct visa for migrant construction and manufacturing workers. Abusing the B1/2 and VWP program is not the right way to do this and frankly, is extremely amateur and shows a sense of disdain for our laws.

The European and Japanese companies like VW Group, Stellantis, and Toyota haven't had the same history of visa abuse that Hyundai Group and LG Group have had in the US.

If they can stand up EV and battery factories without the same persistent abuse and flouting of OSHA regulations, why can't Hyundai Group and LG Group?

> So does the US want this factory built or not

I am a big booster for US-SK relations, but we want your chaebols to follow our labor laws if you want to build here.

I've worked closely with the Korean policymakers, and had good friends who worked closely on the Biden era deal to help bring Korean FDI into battery tech and shipbuilding (my thesis advisor from undergrad helped act as a mutual negotiator for the US and SK), and even gave some advice to 박영선 on her semiconductor strategy, so I absolutely want the relationship to succeed, but we are not Vietnam or India where you can demand special privileges or flout labor laws due to FDI.

The Japanese and Taiwanese conglomerates comply with US labor laws, as has Samsung and SK Hynix. It's only Hyundai Group and LG Group that has had a persistent history of labor abuse in the US.

By every standard, we should have banned and sanctioned Hyundai Group after their persistent child labor scandals in Alabama [1], but under political pressure we let them remain because of HD현대중공업

[0] - https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immi...

Are there US workers who should have been hired to do this factory-bootstrapping instead? Because that’s what the H1B stuff (and most illegal immigrant-worker debate in general) has been about, and otherwise it’s only superficially similar.

AFAIK H1Bs follow the letter of the law and calls are for reform to make visas stricter / reduce the kinds of visas, which is basically the opposite of what I’m seeing here.

> Are there US workers who should have been hired to do this factory-bootstrapping instead

Yes. Of these companies [0], Hyundai-LG has been the only malcontent

The European and Japanese manufacturers haven't done anything similar - only the Koreans are.

[0] - https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/06/tracking-the-ev-battery-fa...

That link only lists some companies that have built factories (or are trying to), and nothing about how they were built.

Not a single one of them have had an immigration raid like Hyundai-LG. It would have been MASSIVE news like the ongoing one if it happened.

Hyundai has been notorious about this for decades in the US, like the ongoing child labor scandal [0]

[0] - https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immi...

Well put.

You can't complain about it in your industry and get mad when people do it about theirs...

I don't think "HN" detests anything. Some commenters might, though.

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