Stephen Miller's Quota Likely Drove Korean Arrests in Immigration Raid | Hacker News Reader

Stephen Miller's Quota Likely Drove Korean Arrests in Immigration Raid

forbes.com

91 pointsgok80 comments

In addition to Korea being one of our most important military allies in the world, you need batteries for military drones, and the US is way behind in the development of a domestic manufacturing supply chain for next gen batteries.

So now we know clearly that nationalist xenophobia the true most important priority for this administration. Or at least, more important than either the domestic economic interests of their own base or strategic national security interests.

> nationalist xenophobia the true most important priority for this administration

It is a little more complicated than that. It is what around 40% of American population want. (Then another 9.5% or so voted for Trump based on the price of eggs, the fact that the other candidate was a woman, and so on).

40% of the voting population*

Actually, it was ~30% of the voting population.

According to Wikipedia[0]:

Trump/Vance received 77,302,580 votes (49.8% of votes cast)

Harris/Walz received 75,017,613 votes (48.3% of votes cast)

Total votes cast: 152,320,193.

Those in the US eligible to vote[1]: ~250-260 million.

77,302,580/250,000,000 == ~0.3 or 30%.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...

[1] https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/2020/... [PDF]

That's worse, though. It implies that 40% of the "electorate" was (in some combination) either prevented from voting or not bothered enough by the difference between plausible electoral outcomes to actually try to influence said outcome.

Just because the people voted for Trump does not mean that the people don't want visa laws followed. Also, voting for someone does not give that someone carte blanche to do whatever the hell they please.

> So now we know clearly that nationalist xenophobia the true most important priority for this administration

Just now? The man entered politics and the first thing he said was how he was going to build a wall to keep the "criminal, diseased, rapist" Mexicans out. Yeah, of course this administration is preoccupied with nationalist xenophobia.

> “There was widespread anger across the political spectrum in South Korea at the behavior of the U.S. authorities"

Korean politics (like everywhere else) has gotten incredibly polarised in the last few years, but this incident managed to unite them for a little while before they devolved back to blaming each other as for why this had happened.

Stephen Miller has always seemed a bit freaky and fascist. Here's him last month:

>The Democrat [sic] Party does not fight for, care about, or represent American citizens. It is an entity devoted exclusively [his emphasis] to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.

Hope they don't try to ban it.

Stephen Miller is a loathsome human being who's behind a lot of the current administration's excesses.

Especially the ones that involve shooting the US in its own proverbial economic foot, for ideological reasons.

The US is way behind in battery technology. This was a badly needed technology transfer into the US. And now it's broken, for at least six months.

What happens in six months?

It's in the article, that's when they'll resume work on the plant.

> According to LG Energy Solution, construction at the plant will remain on hold until the first half of 2026, reported WJCL, delaying by several months when U.S. workers can begin jobs at the facility.

ICE took away the workers that were delivering and installing equipment, which introduced delays into the construction process.

That assumes that LG can find workers who want to risk going to the US.

The government of South Korea is forming a "task force" with the US embassy in Seoul to try to get visa procedures fixed so this doesn't happen again. "Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said the body will be led by director-level officials, emphasizing that its purpose is to facilitate practical consultations rather than political declarations." The view from the Korean side is worth reading. [1] This may reduce Korean investment in the US.[2]

[1] https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/foreignaffairs/20250916/korea-u...

[2] https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2025/09/south-korea-v...

As if deficient visa procedures were the reason this happened.

and possibly greatly reduced foreign investment for 3 years

“Other attorneys and I are hearing from companies in Asia and Europe who say, ‘Maybe we should hold off on big investments in the U.S. for at least three years.’”

Exactly. If I'm a foreign company thinking about setting up a factory in the US, I'd probably pass.

With the tariffs it's already going to be hard to get the equipment you need into the US without spending a significant amount of money. But now you run the risk of the US arresting and deporting all your skilled workers setting up and managing that factory? No thank you.

Absolutely braindead move.

The battery plant was just to make batteries for EVs. The Trump administration has made clear it is anti-EV, so the Trump administration would not consider this a significant loss.

This is already impacting Korean funded semiconductor plants under construction in the US.[1]

[1] https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-09-16/busines...

Good will is the kind of thing that when you lose it once, you never get it back. The Koreans, and various others, will take it to their grave.

Are we all just going to let fascist lubricant flow over clearly defineable facts?

Most of us only know knew fascism from history books. But I think the part that has been the most surprising is how stupid it is.

That's a good insight.

Inept authoritarianism - the worse of both worlds.

One could argue that incompetent authoritarianism is better for the country than competent authoritarianism.

It's just too bad those are our only choices at the moment.

Practice makes perfect.

One could argue that ineptitude is the lubricant.

> the part that has been the most surprising is how stupid it is

Read The Wages of Destruction.

The Nazis were economically inept. This part of fascism’s history—its incompetence–is often overwritten by stories of gleaming German engineering and Italian timeliness.

I'm sure the Volkswagen Ponzi scheme would have ended up fine... /s

Basically, fascism creates a system where people are promoted based on political loyalty rather than competency.

The most loyal people will be the people who lack skill since they only have the position due to the higher ups ensuring loyalty.

> But I think the part that has been the most surprising is how stupid [fascism] is.

I mean, Mussolini did try to ban pasta in Italy...

https://bigthink.com/the-past/pasta-italy-mussolini/

What is the fascist lubricant you refer to?

planned economies, rat tails and cobras breeding, lines of code counts, etc. the history is abundant with examples. There is a popular saying in Russia (originated by a famous for his "language skills" Prime-Minister from the 90-ies - Chernomyrdin) - "We have never had such a thing happen, and it has just happened again".

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