I HATE Trump, and was very closely aligned with the previous administration.
Even in the Biden admin we pushed back on Taiwanese companies like TSMC attempting something similar, as well as Hyundai after they were discovered using undocumented child labor to build one of their EV factories.
This exact raid would have happened even if Harris was in the White House right now.
> I thought the constructive goal was to restore US industrial capacity and manufacturing jobs
And deciding to almost exclusively use temporary Korean labor without the correct insurance and workman's comp contributions in order to set cement and lay pipe is adding American jobs?
European, Japanese, and Taiwanese projects of similar scope haven't done similar shenanigans.
> We understand bending of the rules to build things...
That'll hold up in court when an employee is crushed by falling steel while building a battery plant, like what happened at this Hyundai plant right before the raid (which the Guardian reports seems to have been done by OSHA inspectors annoyed at Hyundai's relative impunity) [0]
> I thought the constructive goal was to restore US industrial capacity and manufacturing jobs
Okay, so let's not focus on strict application of the rules then. One of the main themes of Trumpism is using strict applications of rules as a cudgel to hurt people, and feel justified while doing so.
But this is Hacker News, right? We understand bending of the rules to build things. And the overriding constructive public policy goal here is reindustrialization.
To the extent LG is taking shortcuts with proper visa paperwork out of administrative expedience, that likely points to things that need to be reformed about the rules. To the extent that LG has been doing things directly contrary to public policy but now enforcement is stepping up, it would be better to address those things gradually without interrupting the project. Maybe still a surprise raid to catalog who is doing exactly what on the site, but then gradual "these guy needs to go, you've got two weeks to find local replacements" etc. The only point to doing a massive raid, arrest, detainment, and deportation is the spectacle.
Yes. Manufacturing speicifc news agencies have reported on this [0].
Korean and American unions have united to condemn the ICE raids [1], but that doesn't absolve Hyundai-LG for committing labor and immigration abuse.
> It seems grossly inefficient to me to send workers on B1s to pour cement.
It is WAY cheaper than paying the right insurance and US construction salairies ($20k-40k in SK versus $70k-90k in the Georgia).
> It's not just salaries though is it? There's hotels/accommodation, flights, per diems
That's at most $10k post-tax. Paying $70k-90k means also paying around an additional 0.25-0.5x in employer contributions depending on the state in the US.
By bringing in labor from Korea, they are being paid in Won, covered by insurance IN Korea (not the US), and all workman's comp has been paid IN Korea (not the US).
> so there'd be some language friction
Yep, but most of management and the chain in-between in Hyundai (and most Korean companies) are always Koreans or Korean diaspora. This has been a major friction in Vietnam and India as well, where Korean companies like Hyundai-Kia and Samsung would segregate Korean nationals and Korean origin personnel from locals (eg. Separate canteens, separate accommodations, separate per diems) even if they were doing the same work at the same level.
Samsung's chip design office in Gurgaon is notorious for this.
> which you edited later to remove)
I can't reply, so I'm in the process of replying via edits. I accidentally deleted it during the editing process
> Even Korean unions united with the UAW to condemn Hyundai-LG for this
The statement has a vague mention of the company forcing the workers to shoulder "visa risks". One sentence out of 5 paragraphs.
Most of the condemnation in that statement is about the actual raid. Even UAW, an American union, thought that went too far.
> It is WAY cheaper than paying the right insurance and US construction salairies ($20k-40k in SK)
It's not just salaries though is it? There's hotels/accommodation, flights, per diems. The churn of flying people back and forth. I presume Korean construction workers aren't necessarily fluent in English (I don't know how education there works) so there'd be some language friction. You might as well hire undocumented construction workers who are already in the country (which they have also been doing apparently).
> Yes. Manufacturing speicifc news agencies have reported on this
I read both your UAW/Korean union statement (which you edited later to remove) and the manufacturing dive source. Neither of them states what specific work the detained Korean workers were doing. Definitely no mention of mundane construction wors by Korean workers at this site specifically. Although it did state 23% of construction workers in the US are undocumented.
As I said, the media reporting on this has been extremely lax and vague about what actually happened. They either don't know how to report it or don't want people to know for whatever reason.
Even in the Biden admin we pushed back on Taiwanese companies like TSMC attempting something similar, as well as Hyundai after they were discovered using undocumented child labor to build one of their EV factories.
This exact raid would have happened even if Harris was in the White House right now.
> I thought the constructive goal was to restore US industrial capacity and manufacturing jobs
And deciding to almost exclusively use temporary Korean labor without the correct insurance and workman's comp contributions in order to set cement and lay pipe is adding American jobs?
European, Japanese, and Taiwanese projects of similar scope haven't done similar shenanigans.
> We understand bending of the rules to build things...
That'll hold up in court when an employee is crushed by falling steel while building a battery plant, like what happened at this Hyundai plant right before the raid (which the Guardian reports seems to have been done by OSHA inspectors annoyed at Hyundai's relative impunity) [0]
> I thought the constructive goal was to restore US industrial capacity and manufacturing jobs
"The children yearn for the mines"
[0] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/12/immigration-...