Ask HN: Good resources for DIY-ish animatronic kits for Halloween?
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Why the Technological Singularity May Be a "Big Nothing"
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South Korea will bring home 300 workers detained in Hyundai plant raid
80 DocFeind 121 9/7/2025, 11:00:00 PM apnews.com ↗
> 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...
Most other countries have similar policies. The line between those permitted activities and "work" is notoriously blurry. This often results in unexpectedly denied visas, and sometimes results in nasty letters or fines. It almost never results in this kind of show of physical force, even in unfree countries.
As with a lot of things, I'm not so opposed to enforcing visa rules for something like this but maybe the shackles and method of detention weren't all that necessary. Also worth looking at fixing the reasons why companies are skipping the proper visa process, because nobody at all should be (or is?) opposed to LG/Hyundai setting up a factory in the US. Things we should be doing with a helping hand are being done with guns drawn instead.
But we all know they're doing it this way for the populist theater, there's folks out there that want to watch fascist police state theater on the evening news.
How many of the 300+ South Korean workers does this describe?
The "gain" is the armchair nazis' watching it on the news approval rating and the rest of the population getting acclimatized to the environment. These things are being done for show, to systematically test the boundaries and build consent for future actions by normalizing this kind of activity.
There are dozens of other ways this could have been handled.
America First! (just don't build factories here that boost the American economy)
Wasn't the whole point of America being allowed to color outside the lines ?
Seems hard to characterize this in any way other than calling it incredibly stupid.
The same way it is ok to go 1-5 mph over the speed limit on the freeway. Both are illegal on paper, but in practice, law enforcement turns a blind eye and actual enforcement would entangle a lot of people and interfere with the status quo. The juice is probably not worth the squeeze, as Arizona and Florida found out.
Arrest the wrong German executive as part of your "immigration crackdown" and suddenly Mercedes is pulling out of your economy.
Alabama has gone down this road, and I'm not seeing how it will be any better for anyone this time around. People tentatively agreeing with it or not.
If there are so many undocumented laborers we need, then the issue is documentation. Trump is [not exactly endearing himself with SK](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-china...).
Aren't we supposed to be encouraging American manufacturing? Or is the plan to run out Hyundai and make Fords?
What is this referring to and where can I read more about this? I may have missed the news.
It probably requires a lot of work and effort to lay it out explicitly, so they don't. It would be better for workers to figure it out, but that's not the administration's style either.
Hopefully the plant doesn't have to shutdown because of this.
It's like if a neighbor fixes your fence without asking you first. Wrong? Maybe. Harmful? Definitely not.
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ok... of course you can easily apply.
But then, when do you get the approval? next day? next week? next month? year?
this is just a big example of US not being "institutionally ready" for Trump's "Made in America" vision.
There was a political aspect to this story. It's odd that trump hasn't yet gone scorched earth on SK but he wanted to put them and everyone else on notice. He wants to negotiate from a position of strength.
Trump is facing some serious backlash from his blue-collar voters over the epstein files...
getting rid of korean workers for local jobs is going to give him some cover.
I'm aware that there are people with specialized knowledge who travel internationally for that kind of work. What I'm unclear about is the scale.
Far fetched? Its somewhat like a farmer complaining about rain and sun.
Regardless I am glad the workers get to go home. If it is illegal I’d imagine the company should be at fault.
According to the article, 450 were arrested, over 300 are South Korean, but the article makes it impossible to tell who entered illegally, and who had incorrect visas or expired ones, and their various nationalities.
Maybe Korean companies are used to getting away with that kind of thing? Seems fairly short sighted given the current focus on immigration.
Example from 2022: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Alabama_child_labor_al...
https://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/we-are-scared-and-we-...
I mean, I understand public humiliation is something Usians like, but was it necessary here? To me, punishing the workers is so unimaginably cruel and pointless...
The problem is that the US is sending deeply conflicting messages. Does it want Hyundai's investment or not? It's not that Hyundai needs to build a factory in the middle of nowhere in Georgia.
The problem is Hyundai chose their subcontractors very poorly.
That is the current administration’s policy, yes.
This claim isn’t in the article. Articles that do mention the detention site mention one with a medical center and a library
But if you take things at face value, this isn’t a case where ICE is going berserker mode. They went through investigation and obtained search warrants.
Regardless how they handle detention, the only conclusion is to send them back. Thankfully it seems swift so the workers won’t endure long uncertainty.
Last but not least. One of the arguments of said investment, is to boost local employment, in exchange of other benefits, mostly tax reduction. It is a two way door
It’s only logical that if you operate in the U.S. you follow basic U.S. laws.
Then why is it doing so? I'm lost.
Are you implying that it's an act of charity towards the US with zero expectation of or potential for profit? Then why doesn't Hyundai just save the management trouble and donate to a charity?
I have sympathy for the workers. In reality it is the immmigration attorneys or other members of the company who need to be sanctioned.
Source?
https://www.youtube.com/live/AD7n_nSOorU
4:30 Describes the search warrants and arrests.
5:10 "475 were illegally present in the United States"
6:25 "Majority were Korean nationals"
No criminal charges yet. It's an ongoing investigation.
Not quite; The figure includes those with visa.
"Illegally present in the United States or in violation of their presence in the united states, working unlawfully"
This also leaves open the question of what "violation of the visa" entails here. They may well have been working within their visas, only for ICE to arbitrarily rule otherwise.
As this comment[1] states with an official source:
> 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.
Maybe the business use of ESTA also covers the above use cases?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45164008
This was done for theatre effect.
Koreans can come to US without visa, but that visa doesn’t allow you to work. That means no hands on work at the site. Considering the raids happening at the factory itself, I would really be surprised if they are only there to receive training by their US counterparts, which seems pretty unlikely.
As immigrants, our visa status has been tracked by day one, and constantly validated. It boggles my mind why Hyundai didn’t just pay to apply for H2B visa, to invite those workers to come here legally. Yeah it takes time and money but it is the correct thing to do
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But with the disclaimer, the whole raid is stupid – I thought the US govt was trying to bring jobs to the states, encourage foreign investments, and move manufacturing over there? And then the very next thing they do is detaining and deporting people who are there to literally do that?
Even if you’re gonna complain about not having the correct visas, at least treat the people who are helping your country in good faith, not like people who got caught while trying to smuggle in across the border.
About the visa situation – quoting a comment from the past article since it explains it more clearly than what I could possible do:
> For people saying "they should have had the right visa", no one does this.
> Any day of the week all of the big tech companies will have dozens of overseas engineers in the US attending meetings, and gasp working on-site (writing code, etc). They all have either tourist visas or visa waivers.
> And it's the same thing when the US engineers visit the remote sites in other countries.
> Regardless of what the letter of the law is, this has long been the practice, because it's the only workable solution and is clearly within the spirit of the law.
> In this case LG was fitting out a new batter factory. That is a very complex setup with highly specialized machines. The ONLY way that was ever going to happen was with LG specialists coming over to do the setup and get the line working. And it's almost certain that getting "correct" visas for all these people would have been practically impossible, and has not been the actual practice for many decades.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45159119
it's the same thing when a US company sets up a facility abroad -- it brings in US specialists who are knowledgeable of the equipment and processes; US contractors go abroad all the time, and no, they usually don't have long-term work visas
also
WE MIGHT JUST RANDOMLY DECIDE TO ARREST AND DEPORT YOUR WORKERS WHO ARE SETTING UP THOSE FACTORIES.
You can tell me that i've got it all wrong, and the workers were completely legal and they weren't exploiting cheap labour and this isn't a huge scandal, but please back up your claims. As far as i can tell hyundai is getting away scott free with breaking the law because they are a big corporation.
These people were brought there for one-off, short-term, specialized work to get the factory ready, to start employing those thousands of locals, as per Hyundai's agreement with Georgia's state govt. They abused temporary / non-work visas to do so, but not to displace local labor (which wouldn't know how to do the job) - rather, to help build a new source of local labor.
As such, it's likely that there isn't a single person in the world who "wins" because of this deportation, except maybe some harangued ICE official with quotas to fill. Maybe that's why "the white house hasn't yet made a huge fuss about it and why hyundai isn't being held to account."
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It is your fellow foundational Americans who are screwing you over, as always
It's also clearly not just me, as the Ioniq 5 has been rated the EV of the year several years running by multiple publications.