South Koreans Feel Betrayed by Workforce Detentions at Georgia Hyundai Plant

Your boss telling you to violate the terms of your visa doesn't mean you get to do that. They violated their visas, so they get kicked out.

And I've heard similar stories from other people, including one where union employees intentionally placed debris to obstruct a non-union worker with a cart; they lay in wait until she came along and picked up the barrier, then got her written up for it.

While I support unions generally, I'm convinced that sour experiences of this variety have worked against them politically.

So if hookers are working the streets, the hammer does not fall on them and will fall on their pimp instead? The cops will just let them go?

The law does not work the way you think it does.

The Asian high tech companies have a history of falsely claiming US workers just aren’t smart enough to do the job when in fact what they really want is to have their own workers come in and work triple overtime at slave wages. It was a huge issue with the TSMC build in Arizona.

If they brought people in to do construction work on either tourist visas or B1 meeting type visas that’s illegal and should be and what happened here makes perfect sense.

Of course enforcing pro-labor laws against multinationals isn’t exactly what this admin is known for, so it’s probably a fuck up. But until we know the details we don’t know.

Wrong. ESTA is not a visa, it's a requirement for all travelers to US.

The visa-waiver program (VWP) doesn't include the right to work. You need to have an appropriate visa if you're being paid (or given material benefits) while travelling in US.

Things like interviews or conferences or workshops are not included in the right to work requirement.

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

And they would feel betrayed because their bosses probably told them it was ok.

I understand why they did this (H1B is painful and a B1 visa may have been the only way to get people to train American factory workers), but it’s not like they were completely innocent. South Koreans were still treated with a lot more respect and dignity than almost any other ethnicity has been.

1. All these plant construction deals have due dates both on paper and off the paper. Build these by x date kind of deal in order to get x amount of support or tax cuts or regulation burden eased etc in these states. So these companies are trying to build these things ASAP.

2. Also these due dates are off the paper. When new leaders come in at federal, state or municipal, it always carries risk that some things will change and construction of it becomes difficult. Projects of this scale can be scrutinized and delayed to death because they are "illegal" because it can't fully satisfy million lines of legal clauses. It is possible because the political climate allows it. Even from Korea side, imagine new regime comes in from Korea side that tries to build ties with China, and they say we are reducing ties with US and you should ease development etc. These companies are then in negative by order of billions.

3. So time is of essence.

4. H1B would be the visa to get for these workers but it is gamed to death and these workers can't get them in time.

5. So both America side, and Korea side agree in an underhanded way to agree that these workers can come into work, build the plants and train the local workers ASAP.

6. Look at the recent interview by Trump where he even admits it is expected that workers need to come in fast to build these plants. So he's understanding of the situation. He's been a builder for his life. He know projects of these scale require a green light from the authority to work.

7. Trump is likely using this incident as a bargain chip for trade negotiations or ICE accidentally going pitbull on an unintended target

As for why they're pissed off, that seems obvious. If say Australia wanted to have a software engineering office, invited my employer to set up an office, my employer sent me over there to do something related to that telling me it was in accordance with the law, and then the Australia government arrested me, threw me in jail, and posted videos of this all over social media, I would be pissed off too.

South Korea is essentially a U.S. vassal state, so there’s an expectation that ICE wouldn’t be as brutal to them as say, if they were Venezulans.

They are being punished for the leadership of US.

As a sidenote, the fact that this happened in the middle of tariff negotiations with South Korea probably was used as leverage to get more for the US, so Hyundai is probably going to get heat from the South Korean government over this gaff.

If you're a union that is largely concerned with preserving jobs and privileges in a shrinking industry, then there is a pretty good chance that you are going to be quite opposed to non-union immigrants coming in and "taking your jobs."

If you're a farm-worker union with a growing membership of immigrants, more concerned about adding new members and organizing than with preserving previous wins, you may be quite in favor of more 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.

It’s worthwhile for any foreigner to look around and see if they want software unions because without a doubt you will be outnumbered by domestic workers who will immediately turn on you the moment they don’t need you.

And here are some Asians, in detention because of a labor union. As anyone could have predicted.

The "completely" is going quite far given the treatment of them. They could be sent a notice ordering to stop work and leave. Or the employer could be told to start applying for visa updates or else. It's not like a skilled Hyundai worker on a temporary international work assignment is likely to run away and start an undocumented life in the US instead. It was a completely unnecessary show of force that also cost more than sending a few letters.