If they are blackmailed via tariffs to build factories in the US so that the US becomes self-sufficient, there is no leverage at all. So don't build these factories.
If they can build battery factories, semiconductor fabs, and various other factories in the US without having to resort to the above visa abuses, why can't Korea Inc?
Heck, Daimler built a similar sized factory to Hyundai-LG's in MS relying only on American labor [0]
[0] - https://www.daimlertruck.com/en/newsroom/pressrelease/accele...
You didn't see similar persistent flouting of labor and immigration laws despite all 3 being lead by Asian (and in some cases Korean) companies with similar organizational structures.
Hyundai played it fast and loose. If Samsung SDI can open a gigafactory in the US while following US laws, why can't Hyundai?
Just because ICE was extremely heavy-handed does NOT absolve or give Hyundai-LG the right to break American labor or immigration laws, or ask for special treatment.
Even Biden bluntly told Hyundai leadership to "Hire American" [4] following pushback over this plant.
[0] - https://na.panasonic.com/news/panasonic-energy-begins-mass-p...
[1] - https://www.desotoks.us/394/Panasonic-Electric-Vehicle-Batte...
[2] - https://www.toyota.com/usa/operations/map/tbmnc
[3] - https://news.samsungsdi.com/global/articleView?seq=36
[4] - https://www.ft.com/content/c677b9aa-2e89-4feb-a56f-f3c8452b3...
I'm seeing a lot of demands form the US with the only upside being the privilege to sell stuff to Americans. What can they use those dollars to buy?
If our tax dollars are going to subsidize the construction and development of these factories, then they better follow our laws.
Hyundai is the only malcontent. Every other IRA project has not had a similar kind of scandal.
If Hyundai doesn't want to participate in American Industrial Subsidizes by following our laws, they can return the billions of dollars in subsidizes provided.
> I'm seeing a lot of demands
Follow our laws if you want our subsidizes.
Hire American if you want our subsidizes.
Biden literally told Hyundai's leadership this same thing point blank. [2]
[0] - https://www.ossoff.senate.gov/press-releases/sen-ossoff-lg-e...
[1] - https://e2.org/announcements/
[2] - https://www.ft.com/content/c677b9aa-2e89-4feb-a56f-f3c8452b3...
Where's the evidence of this persistent flouting of immigration laws?
How do you that the other factories don't (or didn't) have the exact same issues & Hyundai was just the first factory that ICE chose to target?
My understanding is that it is fairly common practice for foreign companies to send experts from their home countries in order to do knowledge transfer, since the skill set isn’t available domestically.
And the added issue is, most other companies (even Korean ones like Samsung) have been able to bring comparable projects online without ending up with the same scandals.
Hyundai has a common and persistent practice of bringing in Koreans from Korea to work manual labor abroad, and was warned by regulators on multiple occasions about this [0], and even their employees in Korea warned management that they were breaking regulations [0]
Even during the Biden admin we warned Korean companies not to play it fast and loose [0]:
"U.S. Department of Commerce official Andrew Gately warned South Korean companies and their contractors last year not to "cut corners" in visa applications. "Please do not put your employees or the employees of your contractors at risk," he said at a seminar in Seoul."
This isn't a Kilmar Abrego Garcia situation, especially given that Korean business media is framing this as a "how dare they touch Koreans after we invest" situation instead of as a humanitarian situation. Why should FDI buy impunity - especially when projects like the Hyundai one were funded by IRA subsidizes.
Installing machinery does not fall under the B visa exemption [1]. An engineering manager advising on software would.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/workers-say-k...
[1] - https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
However, it should be addressed at the corporate level, not by targeting the individual workers. They are just doing their jobs under the direction of their employers. Any fraud committed here is by the Hyundai corporation first and foremost.
The treatment of these workers has been exceedingly cruel and should be considered out of bounds in this country, but sadly it has become normalized.
We've done this for over a decade with both Democrats and Republicans in power.
I agree that the treatment was horrendous, but Korean businesses and politicans aren't angry because of the treatment - they are angry because now they cannot use this practice any longer.
The same raid would have happened under the Harris administration, and the same political fallout would have happened.
Even South Korean police continue to use indefinite detention during immigration raids (despite the constitutional court ruling against them) and has notoriously horrid migrant labor rights, so it's very hypocritical when Korean workers arrested were given better conditions than Mongolian, Vietnamese, or Thai migrants caught in similar dragnets in Korea are provided, but there is no interest in Korea to leverage this to better Korea and American labor rights.
ICE has overreached, but then going back and defending Hyundai like a significant number of people are is deeply wrong. The UAw was right to both condemn Hyundai as well as ICE. Yet, a significant portion of people are saying Georgia should be thankful to get this kind of FDI (even though it was thanks to our tax dollars becuase of the IRA).
As an American I am not responsible for the actions of another nation, but I am for those of my own. Therefore it is immaterial to me how Korea treats immigrants, at least not when I am discussing the morality of our system.
Either you have a sense of what is right and wrong when it comes to our fellow human beings or you don’t. Feel free to criticize the actions of the Korean government if you want, that does not absolve the US of its own transgressions.
This isn’t just going to impact our relationship with Korea, but also the rest of the world too.
Optics, in international relations, matter a lot.
We have been for years now, but Hyundai has not changed their practices in the US.
From child labor [0] to employees literally crushed to death [1] to constant OSHA failures [2] for over a decade [3], Hyundai's leadership has continued to have a horrid track record on worker safety in the United States.
We have been punishing them for decades, but they do not change. If this is the only way to get a message across to Korea Inc, so be it.
> Optics, in international relations, matter a lot.
Of course.
Yet the optics of a company like Hyundai getting hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in state and federal subsidizes but continuing to flout US laws also matters.
As I mentioned before, Samsung hasn't had similar scandals despite investing a similar amount in the US, nor have Hyundai's peers in Japan.
Using the ICE raid to whitewash Hyundai's obscene labor record (like a number of commentators are doing) is ridiculous.
[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/business/hyundai-child-la...
[1] - https://www.enr.com/articles/60802-third-fatality-recorded-a...
[2] - https://www.wsav.com/news/local-news/osha-construction-worke...
[3] - https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/osha/osha20161214-0
They said to punish the company, but not put hundreds of employees who were told their papers were in order - half of which whose papers were - in literal shackles like they're violent criminals. What the everyday person sees in their news feeds is important and shapes how the US is viewed culturally and as an economic partner.
I'll throw in that we should actually talk about fixing our VISA rules?
Using Hyundai's allegedly obscene labor record to whitewash the ICE raid seems similarly ridiculous.
There are literally countless better ways to deal with this.
Also, given this party is trying to legalize child labor in multiple states, I don’t think they did this because of working conditions.
It's become normalized because it's normal. Illegal immigrants are our friends, loved ones, colleagues, and classmates.
I never expected this administration to successfully remove illegal immigrants because fundamentally at this point removing illegal immigrants means removing our neighbors. I did anticipate they would, and will continue to, unsuccessfully address the problem while causing an awful lot of pain for both immigrants and American citizens (this was inevitable since the problem fundamentally boils down to separating people from their neighbors over something as arbitrary as "borders someone else drew on a map before we were born").
I got older and wiser, and watched several more administrations face-plant when they tried to pretend it was an easy problem with an easy solution.
Best case is this is more of the same, and it wasn't good last time.
1. Apportionment for both the House of Representatives and the Electoral College absolutely includes undocumented immigrants and all other non-citizens. Their presence alone allocates more electoral weight to blue states where they congregate.
2. They may not vote immediately but over time they will marry/integrate and ultimately will vote. And crucially their children will vote. In the medium term voter demographics will change radically if Democrat corruption is allowed to proceed
3. As soon as they gain power again the Democrats will take whatever steps necessary to speed up the process of getting them on the electoral role. This will be done under the guise of "compassion" but will really be about the pursuit of power.
California used to be a red state but was turned blue through immigration.
The vast majority of Democrats voted against requiring proof of citizenship to vote.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/house-passes-republica...
... Why didn't the Republicans do the same? Seems like a good idea. Of course, the GOP pursuing good ideas may assume competence, something neither of us are assuming. I take your lack of defense of my criticism of this administration's competence as agreement.
(Different topic, but the Democrats were right to vote against proof of citizenship. You know who can't prove citizenship? My elderly mother-in-law who's born in the US and lived here her whole life. She doesn't deserve to be disenfranchised because her family was bad at keeping documentation. The people who get denied the vote when we start playing "papers please" at the polls are American citizens, not illegal immigrants).
And in terms of your "criticism" of their competence, it was just a vague smear with nothing of substance behind it. Not worth acknowledging really, particularly if your benchmark is the Biden/Harris admin where we had an autopen president in the early stages of dementia and a vice-president (the border czar!) so incompetent she was too scared to go on podcasts.
Strange how the Dems always seem to find "justifications" to reduce election integrity whether it's through illegal immigration or lax election laws (promoting election fraud, ballot harvesting etc), whilst lecturing everybody about the need to "protect democracy".
... why didn't the Republicans do so? That doesn't sound like corruption, that sounds like good statesmanship.
And those "lax" election laws have worked for decades upon decades; the burden of proof is upon critics to show non-citizens are voting and the numbers just aren't there. Would you like some more lawsuits to prove that fact out, or are the ones the current President already filed (and then went on to win this ostensibly corrupt electoral system anyway) enough? Not interested in debating that topic since it's dead and buried in the ground.
Besides, the premise is flawed. it's not "reduction of election integrity" to make the government representative of the people who live here.
You appear to have bookmarked my comments page, which you perhaps check regularly? I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Could you do me a big favour? Could you delete my bookmark and not reply to my comments any more. I would really appreciate this.
... We do seem to disagree on whether the right approach to non-citizens living among us for decades is to try to suddenly send them away or to figure out why they're still non-citizens and maybe fix that though.
"Give me your tired, your poor," etc.
(It's not so much a bookmark as I keep checking replies to my comments and see you reply to them, then I chase that thread to see if you're carrying the same ideas elsewhere. Perhaps both of us could stand to keep the topics we discuss in this forum more on the topics of technology, business, and hacking.)
You are, of course, also welcome to leave the conversation if you feel it unproductive. It's neat how we are free to choose.
You started this subthread with the musing "It[']s so strange how illegal immigration has been completely normalised in the minds of some people." It's normalized for the same reason school shootings (I don't like it, but ask any member of Gen Z: school shooting drills are as normal as your drills now) and Sunday football are normalized: when something goes on for decades, it's normal. We live in a country where the President's wife broke immigration law (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/melania-trump-modeled-...); are we expected to take him seriously when he leads a crusade against illegal immigration?
The GOP is looking at an ocean, seeing the law declares it's illegal for the ocean to be there, and trying to boil it (instead of doing the smart thing, adjusting to the reality, and building a bridge).