Specialized foreign workers were brought in for repair and specialized work. Korean immigrants are able to come in on ESTA visas for 90 days. No issue there. Labor union claimed the workers were doing union non-specialized work and this broke their visa grants.
Suppose that the plant made special workers do non-special work, the hammer does not fall on the workers. It falls on the plant. Yet ICE was brought in to hammer the workers. This is a big screw up in the legal procedures department.
I don't criticize anyone but this administration is a hot mess. And too arrogant to admit it.
Understandable. I feel sorry for the Korean workers who were caught up in this. Hyundai should be held responsible for illegally importing/trafficking them, they should keep their jobs, as it's not really their fault. They were probably lied to by Hyundai. They're the victims here (as well as the American people, but that's another story).
I don't understand, did they or did they not have invalid visas? I don't understand why they would feel betrayed, it's the law. Why is this so different?
Creating factories in America as a tariff loophole, likely using American taxpayer dollars and infrastructure, and then taking advantage of this to employ foreign labor and claim they have "special guy who welds together a car door skills", is pretty disturbing and emblematic of how stark a failure it is to pour public funding into/for private companies and demand no state stake.
If Google, or Hyundai, get special privileges and resource investment from the state, the state should have an ownership stake in these companies. This is known to most countries and isn't particularly controversial.
> A Savannah labor union leader said local unions have complained that Hyundai and its contractors were improperly using South Korean workers for basic construction that falls outside the visa waiver rules.
I'm glad there's some small way the US people benefitted from this action. Overall it's insane; did they try an ultimatum with lawyers, and an agreement to send everyone home, before sending in the helicopters?
Reading the article it looks like the workers in question were here legally with visas and they were getting the plant online to train US workers. Isn't this exactly what was asked for? WTF is this administration doing literally putting these people in chains?
My take from it is, why the workers are punished for their leadership?
One ought go after them, but instead it's the workers that will take the blame, and leadership will go business as usual. You can't say that higher-ups didn't know what was going on, getting them there.
I knew there were pictures of that, but it was intentional? You tell me your police put foreign people in chains, took pictures without blurring anything, and posted them? It wasn't a leak?
Everything is dumb, but i think this is the worst. Who thought it was a good idea?
And the US union workers agree with this? Even if they were doing illegal work, they cheer seeing fellow workers getting in chains and publicly humiliated i guess? Because of course that's the workers fault their company told them to go work there? Are they dumb?
Sorry i really like your country (well, The Appalachians and the Sierras) but wtf are you doing?
Interesting to see the tacit endorsement of these ICE raids by a local union leader:
> Christi Hulme, president of the Savannah Regional Central Labor Council, said unions that are part of her council believe Korean workers have been pouring cement, erecting steel, performing carpentry and fitting pipes. “Basically our labor was being given to illegal immigrants,” Hulme said.
So far in the US, most labor unions have generally been fairly left-wing, including being pro-immigration. Wonder how long that will last.
> So far in the US, most labor unions have generally been fairly left-wing, including being pro-immigration.
The line up against which leftist ideology fails to cohere with capitalism. Labor unions are a leftist concept but their goal is to uphold worker's rights against Capital (corporations or whoever can swing money around, like lobbyists), a pretty stark Marxist concept. However another thing Marx pointed out is that capitalism is virulent - it will industrialize a country, lift out the working class to middle class and create petit bourgeois, and then move elsewhere to seek new forms of cheap labor. What does your local union do when that happens?
I suppose this is why it was always "Workers of the World" not "Workers of Local 816," but so far as I can tell there's not much organization across international worker's groups outside of explicitly communist groups that are basically clubs, not actual unions with any power.
I don't understand why Trump wants to poke our best allies in the eye over minor issues. The South Koreans are world leaders in heavy industries, including ship building. We should be currying their favor, not alienating them.
I think many Asian companies underestimate how bad labor is in red states. It’s really a deal breaker for high skilled labor. You cannot teach or train these people. It’s cultural more than anything. There is a reason why they had to bring in their own labor for something not so high tech.
This one is where ICE’s operation is completely fair. Koreans have systemically abused ESTA on a massive scale for a long time. Korean companies treat ESTA as the de-facto business visa. US Homeland Security did tighten up the screening last year because of that, but the Korean government chose to do absolute nothing about it. No mention of ESTA & VISA issues was made during the recent US-SK summit meeting. Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later.
And I say all this as a Korean. This article is politically biased rather severely.
Do you believe it's fair to the Korean workers that they are arrested and detained for what they thought was just doing their jobs, whereas their bosses who brought them in with the explicit purpose of skirting visa rules will walk scott free?
This raid was probably a bad idea and not in the US interest, but how much of this work could be done remotely? I'm sure it's much faster to have someone on site, but couldn't someone in Korea (or even someone from Korea in Canada) supervise someone on site via high fidelity video feed? This would be clumsy, but would ensure some knowledge sharing.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 46.1 ms ] threadSpecialized foreign workers were brought in for repair and specialized work. Korean immigrants are able to come in on ESTA visas for 90 days. No issue there. Labor union claimed the workers were doing union non-specialized work and this broke their visa grants.
Suppose that the plant made special workers do non-special work, the hammer does not fall on the workers. It falls on the plant. Yet ICE was brought in to hammer the workers. This is a big screw up in the legal procedures department.
I don't criticize anyone but this administration is a hot mess. And too arrogant to admit it.
If Google, or Hyundai, get special privileges and resource investment from the state, the state should have an ownership stake in these companies. This is known to most countries and isn't particularly controversial.
I'm glad there's some small way the US people benefitted from this action. Overall it's insane; did they try an ultimatum with lawyers, and an agreement to send everyone home, before sending in the helicopters?
One ought go after them, but instead it's the workers that will take the blame, and leadership will go business as usual. You can't say that higher-ups didn't know what was going on, getting them there.
Everything is dumb, but i think this is the worst. Who thought it was a good idea?
And the US union workers agree with this? Even if they were doing illegal work, they cheer seeing fellow workers getting in chains and publicly humiliated i guess? Because of course that's the workers fault their company told them to go work there? Are they dumb?
Sorry i really like your country (well, The Appalachians and the Sierras) but wtf are you doing?
> Christi Hulme, president of the Savannah Regional Central Labor Council, said unions that are part of her council believe Korean workers have been pouring cement, erecting steel, performing carpentry and fitting pipes. “Basically our labor was being given to illegal immigrants,” Hulme said.
So far in the US, most labor unions have generally been fairly left-wing, including being pro-immigration. Wonder how long that will last.
The line up against which leftist ideology fails to cohere with capitalism. Labor unions are a leftist concept but their goal is to uphold worker's rights against Capital (corporations or whoever can swing money around, like lobbyists), a pretty stark Marxist concept. However another thing Marx pointed out is that capitalism is virulent - it will industrialize a country, lift out the working class to middle class and create petit bourgeois, and then move elsewhere to seek new forms of cheap labor. What does your local union do when that happens?
I suppose this is why it was always "Workers of the World" not "Workers of Local 816," but so far as I can tell there's not much organization across international worker's groups outside of explicitly communist groups that are basically clubs, not actual unions with any power.
And I say all this as a Korean. This article is politically biased rather severely.