Having working in US immigration, most reporting on immigration issues leaves a lot to be desired.
Because of the poor reporting, it's not possible to say for sure what happened, but it sounds like Hyundai/LG/subcontractors brought in hundreds of South Koreans on B visas and had them engaging in productive work. That's not what B visas are for. B visas are for meetings, sales, and maybe some light training/setup/integration. When the CEO talks about needing specialized, skilled workers, that's a strong suggestion these workers should have been on L visas.
Unfortunately the same article doesn't even mention the L visa, and cites an immigration lawyer who complains about the difficulty of getting H-1B visas. But L visas are not capped like H-1Bs. In India we approved thousands of L visas specifically for skilled workers to assist with bringing plants/equipment online.
In short, the B visa is not a work visa. Most countries worldwide are quite restrictive about the conditions surrounding work visas, and people who violate the conditions of their visa shouldn't be surprised when there are consequences. Having a valid visa but violating its conditions means you are violating immigration law.
Corporate immigration departments can and do cut corners and may have thought they would save money and time by sending foreign workers on B visas (which they might have already had) or on the visa waiver program. L visa holders don't even have to get paid US-level wages, so one take on the visa type is that it is already a way for companies to undercut US labor.
> and maybe some light training/setup/integration.
What do you mean by "maybe" or "light"? That's an explicitly permitted activity:
> A B-1 visa may be granted to specialized workers going to the United States to install, service, or repair commercial or industrial equipment or machinery purchased from a company outside of the United States, or to train U.S. workers to perform such services.
Modern factories are filled with machines the size of buildings, making that installation sometimes hard to distinguish from the forbidden "construction". It's possible that some of those Koreans were unequivocally on the bad side of the line, but I see zero possibility that the agents could have meaningfully assessed that in the time between beginning the raid and taking the workers away in shackles.
I feel like installing equipment is widely considered to be an illegitimate use of B-1 visas, despite this explicit guidance. I don't understand why. I see from your comment history that you were a US diplomat. Is the internal guidance you received different from what's published?
The reporting is light on what these workers are actually doing. Real construction work like pouring concrete is certainly unacceptable on a B visa. But as you have said B visas are fine for light training/setup/integration. It seems to me that these people are actually just setting up the plant by configuring new machinery.
So the US government does a dog and pony show of ASMR chaining and perp walking Korean engineers constructing a factory vital to our economy and national security?
And this after the admin starts a tariff war against treaty allies for not building factories in the US? Very schizo.
This whole situation is complete insanity and is completely the fault of this administration and the maga movement.
It’s also the fault of the last administration, because when you bend the rules and your reign ends, you have no control over how the next regime is going to enforce the law as it stands. I do not disagree this is insanity, but this is the result of kicking the can on immigration issues for almost two decades. Congress must do its job, but refuses to. Is it not reasonable to both incentivize domestic manufacturing investment while also adhering to immigration visa regulations?
Hyundai has done something similar with children refugees from Central America previously in 2022.
Probably "if I work in a foreign country I should probably have the proper work visa". Though, I blame management not the workers - I suspect many were not aware.
And for the downvoters, try going and working in a foreign country without the proper paperwork and see how it pans out (and how the locals feel about it)...
I bet they’re thinking more “so you blackmailed us into investing in you, and you arrest our people who are there making that investment happen”
I cannot honestly believe that you think any group of people on earth would look at this situation and then think that they should have just followed the rules better.
The South Korean government is already saying that the US needs to fix its visa program if it wants the investment[1]
Any rational group of people would look and say "they should follow the local laws". And one that practically all civilized countries have, including SK. And yeah, the visa program is problematic - but that is not a green light for breaking the law.
Where would there be rational thought in seeing people you feel some kinship to being chained up and paraded in front of the world by other people you feel less kinship to? This is the kind of thing that sparks wars and riots.
Any rational group of people would look at the government demanding investment but not making the process the same government administers for visas viable for the time frames the government is demanding, and be pissed at the government in question.
This wasn’t in a vacuum done solely for Hyundais profit. The government that did this raid is currently threatening every other country that doesn’t invest in the US _now_ with tariffs and sanctions.
I’m actually trying to understand your point here because what you’re describing to me seems as crazy as a seeing a mugger be pissed that the muggee wasn’t polite enough during the encounter
They were. Other news reports indicated that some tried to hide in sewer ponds.
Some of the workers were on tourist visas.
It's very disappointing. I just bought an Ioniq 9 and it's a great car. I'm really bothered, at both sides, (US and Hundai/LG), for letting the situation get like this.
Here's an AI overview of working illegally in SK btw:
> Working illegally in South Korea can result in deportation, a fine of up to 30 million KRW (approximately US$22,000), and a ban on re-entry for up to five years. Employers who hire illegal foreign workers also face significant penalties, including fines of up to 20 million KRW (around US$15,000) and/or imprisonment.
I would think it unrealistic for a country to make a foreign investment of magnitude that doesn’t favour their citizens. The government wont survive long if its people think it’s just giving lots of money to foreigners.
Im sure there’s an official way to tackle this problem in a less violent manner. Approving of this type of violent operation is a disgraceful and low thing to do.
Right but got caught doing what - trying to build a manufacturing plant that will bring jobs to Americans? It feels like the real loser here is the Americans who would have had jobs after the plant opened. We’re cutting off our nose to spite our face, because people didn’t fill out the right paperwork.
Immigrants are our biggest job creators founding >50% of our unicorns. We’re pooping on what makes America great. There’s no logic or reasoning anymore though, just hate.
I was not aware of the Hyundai factory workers immigrating to the US. I thought they were brought by Hyundai temporarily and on the wrong visa to help build that factory faster.
Unfortunately a lot of people in the US voted for this. They want to see people who are "other" treated harshly and cruely. Trump is giving them what they want.
Straw man fallacy. No one is deporting legal immigrant founders. The White House just hosted two dozen of them for dinner - more than half of those in attendance were Indian or Asian.
Sure, as soon as you have become wildly successful and critical to the business interests of the US, we can overlook everything that came before that moment.
Some polls state otherwise, with many pointing to disillusionment with the methods and likely incarceration and deportation of immigrants that were potentially targeted improperly by the administration as a way to appear tough on immigration to achieve their goals. The net-net of these actions will leave the economy weaker and cause a net loss of population earlier than expected according to the CBO.
I think rhetoric around immigration is functionally a Motte and Bailey game. Many of our most productive immigrants play visa games, overstaying, working on non-working visas, etc. in fact it takes a sort of grit, daring, and entrepreneurship to play fast and loose with bloated inefficient government regulation (such as our immigration system). It is obviously easy to declare “well, my intentions were to always target just the worst ideal of immigrant” while ignoring the reality of how much immigrants— yes, even the unchecked, undocumented, unvetted ones— benefit the country as a whole…
That was the PR line used to trick immigrants into initially supporting the cause, it's become pretty obvious with the sheer glee on social media over all immigrants being harassed and open questioning of the immigration status of anyone they don't like (see: NYC mayoral candidate Mamdani), that it's actually just about not liking anyone who doesn't look like themselves.
If it were this, we'd be doing everything possible to make the process of legal immigration less capricious. Instead we're rounding up anyone who looks foreign or speaks with an accent, ignoring even if they're here legally or following the process.
At least be honest with yourself about what's happening in front of your eyes.
Well, that's not what we have today. ICE making so many arrests at immigration court for people who showed up after they pressure the judges to dismiss the case. People with papers, married parents, and people who have been here decades are being grabbed because they are easy to get for the current administration.
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.
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?"
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.
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]
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:
> 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 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 helped 박영선 on her semiconductor strategy.
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.
We are not Vietnam or India where you can demand special privileges or flout labor laws due to FDI.
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.
Having working in US immigration, most reporting on immigration issues leaves a lot to be desired.
Because of the poor reporting, it's not possible to say for sure what happened, but it sounds like Hyundai/LG/subcontractors brought in hundreds of South Koreans on B visas and had them engaging in productive work. That's not what B visas are for. B visas are for meetings, sales, and maybe some light training/setup/integration. When the CEO talks about needing specialized, skilled workers, that's a strong suggestion these workers should have been on L visas.
Times reporting confirmed a few of the workers were on B visas: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/business/economy/hyundai-...
Unfortunately the same article doesn't even mention the L visa, and cites an immigration lawyer who complains about the difficulty of getting H-1B visas. But L visas are not capped like H-1Bs. In India we approved thousands of L visas specifically for skilled workers to assist with bringing plants/equipment online.
In short, the B visa is not a work visa. Most countries worldwide are quite restrictive about the conditions surrounding work visas, and people who violate the conditions of their visa shouldn't be surprised when there are consequences. Having a valid visa but violating its conditions means you are violating immigration law.
Corporate immigration departments can and do cut corners and may have thought they would save money and time by sending foreign workers on B visas (which they might have already had) or on the visa waiver program. L visa holders don't even have to get paid US-level wages, so one take on the visa type is that it is already a way for companies to undercut US labor.
> and maybe some light training/setup/integration.
What do you mean by "maybe" or "light"? That's an explicitly permitted activity:
> A B-1 visa may be granted to specialized workers going to the United States to install, service, or repair commercial or industrial equipment or machinery purchased from a company outside of the United States, or to train U.S. workers to perform such services.
https://es.usembassy.gov/visas/commercial-industrial-workers...
Modern factories are filled with machines the size of buildings, making that installation sometimes hard to distinguish from the forbidden "construction". It's possible that some of those Koreans were unequivocally on the bad side of the line, but I see zero possibility that the agents could have meaningfully assessed that in the time between beginning the raid and taking the workers away in shackles.
I feel like installing equipment is widely considered to be an illegitimate use of B-1 visas, despite this explicit guidance. I don't understand why. I see from your comment history that you were a US diplomat. Is the internal guidance you received different from what's published?
The reporting is light on what these workers are actually doing. Real construction work like pouring concrete is certainly unacceptable on a B visa. But as you have said B visas are fine for light training/setup/integration. It seems to me that these people are actually just setting up the plant by configuring new machinery.
So the US government does a dog and pony show of ASMR chaining and perp walking Korean engineers constructing a factory vital to our economy and national security?
And this after the admin starts a tariff war against treaty allies for not building factories in the US? Very schizo.
This whole situation is complete insanity and is completely the fault of this administration and the maga movement.
It’s also the fault of the last administration, because when you bend the rules and your reign ends, you have no control over how the next regime is going to enforce the law as it stands. I do not disagree this is insanity, but this is the result of kicking the can on immigration issues for almost two decades. Congress must do its job, but refuses to. Is it not reasonable to both incentivize domestic manufacturing investment while also adhering to immigration visa regulations?
Hyundai has done something similar with children refugees from Central America previously in 2022.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Alabama_child_labor_al...
What are people in South Korea thinking of this? Can’t imagine seeing citizens of my country getting hauled away in chains.
South Korea outraged at 300 workers treated as ‘prisoners of war’ in US raid
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/12/s...
Probably "if I work in a foreign country I should probably have the proper work visa". Though, I blame management not the workers - I suspect many were not aware.
And for the downvoters, try going and working in a foreign country without the proper paperwork and see how it pans out (and how the locals feel about it)...
I bet they’re thinking more “so you blackmailed us into investing in you, and you arrest our people who are there making that investment happen”
I cannot honestly believe that you think any group of people on earth would look at this situation and then think that they should have just followed the rules better.
The South Korean government is already saying that the US needs to fix its visa program if it wants the investment[1]
[1] https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_internatio...
Any rational group of people would look and say "they should follow the local laws". And one that practically all civilized countries have, including SK. And yeah, the visa program is problematic - but that is not a green light for breaking the law.
Where would there be rational thought in seeing people you feel some kinship to being chained up and paraded in front of the world by other people you feel less kinship to? This is the kind of thing that sparks wars and riots.
Any rational group of people would look at the government demanding investment but not making the process the same government administers for visas viable for the time frames the government is demanding, and be pissed at the government in question.
This wasn’t in a vacuum done solely for Hyundais profit. The government that did this raid is currently threatening every other country that doesn’t invest in the US _now_ with tariffs and sanctions.
I’m actually trying to understand your point here because what you’re describing to me seems as crazy as a seeing a mugger be pissed that the muggee wasn’t polite enough during the encounter
> Probably "if I work in a foreign country I should probably have the proper work visa"
Which one would that be in this case?
They were. Other news reports indicated that some tried to hide in sewer ponds.
Some of the workers were on tourist visas.
It's very disappointing. I just bought an Ioniq 9 and it's a great car. I'm really bothered, at both sides, (US and Hundai/LG), for letting the situation get like this.
Hyundai and management (both sides) should have to pay some large fines for sure. I bet some locals were in on it, too.
Here's an AI overview of working illegally in SK btw:
> Working illegally in South Korea can result in deportation, a fine of up to 30 million KRW (approximately US$22,000), and a ban on re-entry for up to five years. Employers who hire illegal foreign workers also face significant penalties, including fines of up to 20 million KRW (around US$15,000) and/or imprisonment.
I would think it unrealistic for a country to make a foreign investment of magnitude that doesn’t favour their citizens. The government wont survive long if its people think it’s just giving lots of money to foreigners.
Related thread from a few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45219388
Like most Americans I’m pro immigration, but I’m also pro enforcing our laws. The company couldn’t follow the law and got caught. End of story.
Im sure there’s an official way to tackle this problem in a less violent manner. Approving of this type of violent operation is a disgraceful and low thing to do.
Yes. But it is possible to agree with the principle and disagree on the specifics.
Right but got caught doing what - trying to build a manufacturing plant that will bring jobs to Americans? It feels like the real loser here is the Americans who would have had jobs after the plant opened. We’re cutting off our nose to spite our face, because people didn’t fill out the right paperwork.
[dead]
Immigrants are our biggest job creators founding >50% of our unicorns. We’re pooping on what makes America great. There’s no logic or reasoning anymore though, just hate.
I was not aware of the Hyundai factory workers immigrating to the US. I thought they were brought by Hyundai temporarily and on the wrong visa to help build that factory faster.
Unfortunately a lot of people in the US voted for this. They want to see people who are "other" treated harshly and cruely. Trump is giving them what they want.
I’m not sure this is precisely what people voted for.
Straw man fallacy. No one is deporting legal immigrant founders. The White House just hosted two dozen of them for dinner - more than half of those in attendance were Indian or Asian.
Sure, as soon as you have become wildly successful and critical to the business interests of the US, we can overlook everything that came before that moment.
It’s not immigrants, it’s unchecked, undocumented, unvetted immigration that most people (including a majority of immigrants) are opposed to.
Some polls state otherwise, with many pointing to disillusionment with the methods and likely incarceration and deportation of immigrants that were potentially targeted improperly by the administration as a way to appear tough on immigration to achieve their goals. The net-net of these actions will leave the economy weaker and cause a net loss of population earlier than expected according to the CBO.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigratio...
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/10/trump-ice-big-beautiful-bil...
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/docume...
I think rhetoric around immigration is functionally a Motte and Bailey game. Many of our most productive immigrants play visa games, overstaying, working on non-working visas, etc. in fact it takes a sort of grit, daring, and entrepreneurship to play fast and loose with bloated inefficient government regulation (such as our immigration system). It is obviously easy to declare “well, my intentions were to always target just the worst ideal of immigrant” while ignoring the reality of how much immigrants— yes, even the unchecked, undocumented, unvetted ones— benefit the country as a whole…
Do you feel that the arrests at the Hyundai plant effectively countered unchecked, unvetted immigration?
That was the PR line used to trick immigrants into initially supporting the cause, it's become pretty obvious with the sheer glee on social media over all immigrants being harassed and open questioning of the immigration status of anyone they don't like (see: NYC mayoral candidate Mamdani), that it's actually just about not liking anyone who doesn't look like themselves.
If it were this, we'd be doing everything possible to make the process of legal immigration less capricious. Instead we're rounding up anyone who looks foreign or speaks with an accent, ignoring even if they're here legally or following the process.
At least be honest with yourself about what's happening in front of your eyes.
Perhaps, but a lot of the recent immigration enforcement pushes haven't been about fully undocumented immigrants.
Well, that's not what we have today. ICE making so many arrests at immigration court for people who showed up after they pressure the judges to dismiss the case. People with papers, married parents, and people who have been here decades are being grabbed because they are easy to get for the current administration.
[dead]
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 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 helped 박영선 on her semiconductor strategy.
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.
We are not Vietnam or India where you can demand special privileges or flout labor laws due to FDI.
[0] - https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
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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...
I don't think "HN" detests anything. Some commenters might, though.
Well put.
You can't complain about it in your industry and get mad when people do it about theirs...