South Korean workers detained in Hyundai plant raid to be freed and flown home

99 MilnerRoute 221 9/7/2025, 1:35:44 PM nbcnews.com ↗

Comments (221)

givemeethekeys · 21h ago
I find it amazing that theres so much sympathy towards giant Korean megacorp here.

“Oh, maybe they got mixed up with the visa because language”. No they did not.

“Oh, maybe it’s really difficult to find local talent”. No it isn’t. Not for them.

There are many advantages for them to illegally fly in a whole Workforce. That is why they did it.

tripletao · 9h ago
What makes you confident they were acting illegally? Here's a US embassy:

> 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...

Many of those detained have been reported to be employed by Hyundai's equipment vendors. That would be consistent with activities of this nature.

It's probably a coin flip whether a different DHS staffer would agree, though. Interpretation of these rules has always been notoriously inconsistent, and probably explains the problem here.

mattnewton · 21h ago
It’s more exasperation at how ridiculous this process is, treating foreign labor like dangerous criminals by default.
dazilcher · 20h ago
How do you suggest we should treat foreign illegal labor?
jayd16 · 12h ago
Like people, maybe? What is the point of treating them like violent criminals other than to dehumanize them? Is it really any more effective than one guy reviewing the payroll and passing out fines until the issues are resolved?

Besides, they haven't been charged with anything so in the US they are considered innocent.

FridayoLeary · 12h ago
Which is why they are being flown home. I see no dehumanizing going on. They were detained because they had no right to be in the country. You are putting a spin on this that simply doesn't exist.

I'm frankly baffled. You have a large capitalist corporation, flouting the laws of the country they're in and exploiting cheap labour. The US are simply enforcing the law like you would expect from any non banana republic. I can't think of in issue where the left should be so aligned with the government. It's a scandal and i hope the executives get held to account.

port11 · 9m ago
This is a malevolent interpretation.

They were in the country to transfer knowledge and help build a factory to create jobs in the US.

By mistake (maybe?), some visas expired, and then all workers are arrested.

Doesn't that seem like an exaggerated response? It's not like they don't respect the US laws and regulations…

mattnewton · 18h ago
In this case, give them and the company responsible a court summons?

Instead they detained all the Koreans in the building and appear to have used them as a negotiating chip in an upcoming “deal” with the government of South Korea. This is behavior we expect of a banana republic not an allied nation of laws.

No comments yet

ivysly · 20h ago
how about like any other kind
votepaunchy · 20h ago
So how should we treat foreign illegal non-labor?
eli_gottlieb · 12h ago
Like the wage-slaves of dangerous criminals.
giraffe_lady · 13h ago
This is easy lol you go after the people benefitting from their labor.
politelemon · 20h ago
Not like dangerous criminals. Not with white gloves. It isn't binary.
seanmcdirmid · 6h ago
Around 90% of foreigner contractors that come to the USA to set up a factory or do maintenance on a factory are here under weird visa arrangements that the ICE would be able to poke holes in regardless. The right visa doesn’t exist, or impossible to obtain, so he Germans/swiss/japanese/koreans/taiwanese/and Chinese come here on visa waiver or simple B1 visas, or even tourist visas, to get the job the they need done out the way quickly (usually a few days or a week of work). The American visa system for short term work is simply messed up, and it’s much easier to get a visa to do the same thing in China than in the USA (surprise, guess where people decided to set up their factories?). America was really just wink/nudge before (we want you to setup a factory here! But no, we can’t really make the visa situation work out…you know what to do…), but now ICE needs to make their quotas and this is just an easy target for them.

The USA is just a bad place for foreign companies to setup factories: you need an army of immigration lawyers to do it, and be willing spending a lot of time waiting to get the “proper visas” for key personnel. South Korea’s interest in getting those engineers back isn’t just purely empathy based, there are probably only a handful of engineers in Korea that can do what they do (good luck getting that factory going before your term is out, Mr. Trump).

jacquesm · 3h ago
> good luck getting that factory going before your term is out, Mr. Trump

That may well have been the goal in the first place.

rich_sasha · 21h ago
I haven't been following the story closely, but it is clear the Korean workers broke visa rules? Or do they just look a bit foreign and talk funny?

Even before Trump there were plenty of stories where ICE clearly didn't know their own country's visa rules.

rayiner · 21h ago
The New York Times write-up on this is pretty good: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us/georgia-battery-plant-.... This plant was under investigation for a significant time. Some citizens and workers with visas were initially detained, but were released once their documentation was verified. The workers being deported were not Hyundai employees, and it seems clear from the company's response that they were not working in the U.S. legally.
aspenmayer · 2h ago
hopelite · 20h ago
I can attest that’s companies, especially large ones will generally know the rules better than the various government agencies and people, precisely because they have an incentive to know, they pay people to know, and there is risk involved. They also usually make a determination that the reward is not only greater than the risk, but greater than the consequences, and they have always been proved correct in that calculation. That especially applies to the executives, the people who immensely profit and effectively never face any, let alone effective consequences, so peoples round them also just keep their heads down and look away or even just facilitate the illegal behaviors in order to brown nose and climb the corporate ladder.

It is somewhat astonishing, but it seems people are baffled when things don’t change even though consequences for corporations and executives are net positive. Why should they care when the c-suite runs off with way more money than before in the end anyways?

Take for example the recent greystar lawsuit by the government for essentially price fixing apartment rents, ie fraud, across the nation. Long story short; estimates are they profited about $2.2 billion every year, the government fined them/agreed to a measly settlement paid to the government; with zero relief or compensation to those they committed their crimes against, nor will the executives that made the illegal decisions suffer any consequences, nor will there be punitive consequences that make executives sit up in attention.

adolph · 20h ago
> amazing that theres so much sympathy towards giant Korean megacorp

At some level stories are told in a way in which there is a good-guy and a bad-guy and the megacorp drew the good-guy straw this time. It was just a few years ago a Hyundai owned subsidiary was caught in the US employing underage people from Guatemala [0].

0. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immi...

mattnewton · 17h ago
When that happened, did they give the company a court date or did they raid the factory and detain the children? That’s the difference here.
adolph · 11h ago
The article insinuates an unannounced visit:

After Reuters documented the disappearance of the young girl who worked at SMART, a team of state and federal authorities conducted the Aug. 9 inspection at SL, in Alexander City. They discovered seven minors there, including the two Guatemalan brothers, among employees making lights and mirrors for Hyundai and Kia. Alabama’s Department of Labor fined SL and JK USA Inc, a staffing agency, $17,800 each.

mattnewton · 8h ago
So it sounds like they gave them a fine and potentially a court date instead of taking hostages. That's my point.
bpt3 · 15h ago
Why would you give a court date to the company and allow hundreds of people who are presumably in the country illegally to remain free until said court date?
Tadpole9181 · 13h ago
Don't pretend to not know the point. Rich executives and profiteers are the ones committing the actual crime. They're coordinating hundreds of people around with the express intent of using illegal labor to subvert local wages and workers' rights.

But every time one of these busts happen, no executives go to jail. They bust in, grab potentially hundreds of instances of those executives committing felonies, and pretend those working class people are the problem, quietly letting the execs giggle away to the bank. Often with a fee single digits percents of what they saved / made.

If there were 300 people here working illegally, I want to see multiple Hyundai executive charged with 300 counts of the associated felony crime.

bpt3 · 11h ago
> Don't pretend to not know the point. Rich executives and profiteers are the ones committing the actual crime. They're coordinating hundreds of people around with the express intent of using illegal labor to subvert local wages and workers' rights.

Then charge them with the appropriate crime.

> But every time one of these busts happen, no executives go to jail. They bust in, grab potentially hundreds of instances of those executives committing felonies, and pretend those working class people are the problem, quietly letting the execs giggle away to the bank. Often with a fee single digits percents of what they saved / made.

Okay, then fix that instead of deciding to allow a bunch of people who are here illegally to remain because you're upset that other people aren't being charged.

> If there were 300 people here working illegally, I want to see multiple Hyundai executive charged with 300 counts of the associated felony crime.

Fine by me. Not sure why you're ranting at me about this tangent from the question I asked the parent poster.

bpt3 · 20h ago
People don't want to think about details, they just want to continue to hate on the other team and Hyuandi (and their contractors) doing something that would be illegal in just about every country on earth could interfere with that goal.
eddythompson80 · 20h ago
The enemy of my enemy is my friend is a common underpinning of bad faith arguments.

It has been really disheartening seeing a generation of, presumably, leftists abandon decades old demands and movements from local worker protections, global environmental causes, or democratic oversight over ivy league institutes by parroting the same bad arguments their opposition did to them over these decades.

As long as I have been alive, very progressive leftists always argued that ivy league institutions need admission reform. They receive billions from our tax dollars, yet their admission policies have always favored the already wealthy and powerful (the rich, alumnus, donors, "elite"). They only pay lip service to "low income families" while straddling most middle class students in insane levels of debt and refuse to publish admission rates. Progressives have always argued that these organizations cannot exist without public (tax payers) funding and as a result should have democratic oversight and should be required to publish their admission rates. We should be withholding that funding or using it as a forcing function for them to do so. The opposition have always argued (in bad faith) to "leave them alone. Education should be independent and they should do whatever they want". Now that a right-wing administration actually put pressure on them (for reasons I disagree with), every "liberal" I know just jumps on the simplest of arguments that "They should be independent. There shouldn't be any oversight required or expected on these educational institutes. That's illegal.". Whats worst is trying to explain how this is a bad argument just gets you yelled at because you must be a "both sides are the same"-person or a secretly republican or "but we're not talking about admission here. We need to unit against the enemy with one argument then we'll figure it out later once education is not under attack" type BS arguments.

Same for tariffs and global trade rules and all the global environmental destruction, human rights violations, and local economy mayhem they caused. The argument isn't that these laws need to be tightened and reconsidered to reduce our dependency on slave labor or funding massive environmental polluters or not incentivizing the biggest consumer base on the plant to consider the diesel emissions cost of shipping massive contains full of plastic trinkets across the pacific only for 99% of them to end up in a landfill. Suddenly the argument from progressives and the left are all about the economy. The cost of TEMU for the poor American consumer and how this is the world we live in. There is nothing we can or should do to change it.

mattnewton · 17h ago
How we do things matters. The rule of law and due process are important too, a strongman can’t just ignore those, muscle people around to their benefit, and pay lip service to leftist ideals to win over the left.
eddythompson80 · 14h ago
Ok.. not really sure what that has to do with what I said. I mentioned nothing about "how we do things". I was only referring to arguments we use for or against things. It's fine to disagree with an action because of "how they are/were done". It's an argument that has thorns of its own, but, again, has nothing to do with what I said.
mattnewton · 8h ago
Your argument seemed to boil down to leftists being against things they previously were for, with the implications it's because the right is supporting it. The way I see it that isn't what is happening. Liberals and leftists are alarmed at the rise of authoritarianism and the decay of the law.
eddythompson80 · 7h ago
None of what I mentioned has anything to do with the rise of authoritarianism nor the decay of law
joenot443 · 20h ago
I'm expecting this to be one of those American news stories where the public reaction is entirely dependent on the current party in power, right?

It feels weird for HN to be going to bat for a company abusing labor laws, am I missing something here?

haswell · 19h ago
When the agency enforcing those labor laws is also blatantly violating the law while carrying out other highly publicized enforcement actions, they will be scrutinized for everything they do, including actions that were likely legal/necessary. That's part of the problem with the government breaking the law - legitimate actions are no longer seen as legitimate, because they have undermined themselves in the public eye.

I also don't think people are "going to bat for a company abusing labor laws" so much as they are highly suspicious of these enforcement actions given the complete lawlessness displayed elsewhere and imagine the possibility that there were more diplomatic solutions that still address the problem appropriately.

add-sub-mul-div · 20h ago
I think the respective parties are consistently welcoming and hostile to immigrants regardless of who's in power, I don't really know what you mean. Biden would have been hated by the left for doing this.

People are so both-sides poisoned they come out with these nonsensical takes reflexively just to virtue signal being "above" having a (public) stance.

neom · 22h ago
nemo44x · 21h ago
I’m guessing they were here on a business/consulting visa and doing more than that but it’s probably been de facto practice for years and hasn’t had issues. And I’m guessing the majority of them have skills in setting a factory up that are difficult to source locally.
dmix · 21h ago
They were flown in under visas to help set up the plant as consultants (at least at one of the plants). I don't think they were intended to continue working there after. Some of the visas were also expired.

The article also says:

> LG Energy Solution said Saturday that 47 of its employees were detained, 46 of them Korean. Another 250 personnel from “equipment partner companies,” most of them Korean, were also being held, it added.

So it seems there were multiple parent companies involved

givemeethekeys · 21h ago
Yeah, it would take a while to train the locals to speak Korean.
nemo44x · 21h ago
Indeed. Likely just a pragmatic thing here that’s always worked. Will likely end up with a new special kind of very short term visa to cover this sort of thing.
nasmorn · 19h ago
Maybe your government is also jeopardizing FDI for some political grandstanding. Then no new visa is needed. Growth simply goes down and less people have health care. Problem solved
givemeethekeys · 21h ago
I sure hope not.

If they want to do business here, then they should be forced to hire here and train as needed and that includes teaching people their preferred ways of communicating.

jacquesm · 20h ago
If we flipped that on US companies operating in Europe then there would be many cries of murder.
HDThoreaun · 19h ago
> If they want to do business here

Ok then they wont do business here.

SanjayMehta · 17h ago
Specialist equipment require specialists to bring them up.

It’s a chicken and egg situation to put it mildly. If you had the people who could be trained to install and run this plant you wouldn’t be importing the entire factory.

nemo44x · 19h ago
Why, it’s like a 3 month consultancy thing not a full time role. I agree that locals should be hired for full time roles and that these guys went about it the wrong way, but previous administrations failed to enforce laws which created this de facto illegal situation.
lokar · 20h ago
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.

general1465 · 18h ago
What you are describing - going to a remote site, sort out something with client and going back - is a business meeting and that falls under visa waiver / tourist visa in any country, because the worker who is doing the job is not paid by the local company, but by his employer in his home country.

With this logic it would be illegal to have a vacation and also write a code in a free time.

pylua · 15h ago
Ianal but my understanding is you can’t do any work , even coding, debugging, if you are in the us on a non work visa.

It does not matter who is funding you.

I could be wrong though. I have personally seen companies abuse this. I’m glad it’s be cracked down on.

lokar · 14h ago
I agree, it's probably the law (not just in the US, but most places). But, IME, it's almost universally ignored, and has to be.

I've never worked in fab/manufacturing, but I assume if you buy a bunch of gear from ASML (100s of millions of $), they are going to send a team out to help set it up and get it working for you. How else could that work? Some story for advanced batteries.

And a similar story for large (multi-national) tech/software companies. People need to travel back and forth between sites. Getting "work" visas for these short visits would be impractical.

Why are you happy to see a crack down? How do you think this should work?

pandaman · 13h ago
There is nothing impractical about getting a business visa, in fact it's the same process as getting a tourist visa and some consulates issue just a generic B-1/2 visa, which can be either, depending on the purpose of your visit. And these visas are usually multi-entry, so you don't need to get one for every visit. Same for visa waiver - it can be used for either business or tourism, you just need to declare the purpose.

The problem in the topical case, is likely, that it was not a short visit but people being employed in the US illegally.

pylua · 14h ago
The solution is to hire and train people inside the country. To build the knowledge base and skills within the country.

I totally understand that it is universally abused. I’ve seen it abused in white collar work. Companies need to adjust economically and plan their budgets accordingly.

Honestly, in many parts of the country there is no hope, no jobs, and just drugs. It’s time to invest in the U.S. citizen again.

I’m happy there is a crackdown because I have seen U.S. jobs lost due to this behavior. It’s actually the only reason I voted for trump.

lokar · 14h ago
In terms of very long term policy, you could try to train people to be able to do this. But, for advanced industrial processes (eg batteries) the way to do that is to establish a bunch of production lines. And that will NEVER happen in the US today without bringing in overseas experts to spend months starting them up.
pylua · 14h ago
Sure, but bring them over on the proper visa! Have them train — not compete against the U.S. worker on wages!
lokar · 14h ago
There is no practical visa to get. If they had to follow the letter of the law there would be no plant. They are not competing against US workers, there are no US workers to do the job.

And, FWIW, when I worked for big multi-national tech firms, it was the same thing having people from the EU offices visit. They were not doing jobs that Americans could do. We already hired all the Americans we could, and these people worked 50 weeks a year in the EU.

pylua · 13h ago
There are plenty of diverse visas available. Arguing that specific visa is not available and therefore you do not have to follow the law is not an argument I can follow. In my mind that is tantamount to fraud.

America is a very large country and I’m sure if you paid enough, and took the time to train the workers you can find people to do the work. If you have planned your budget and timeline around not taking this path then it seems unethical to me.

I’ve witnessed tech jobs done where there are plenty of capable people in the us available to do the work. They just cannot afford to post us wages and train the workers in the us.

I completely understand that some projects are different, and you need a specific skillset. But if you are going to do work on us soil you have to follow the law.

lokar · 12h ago
And I've interviewed many many hundreds of people for jobs at big tech companies, and there is no easy source of US people to fill these jobs. The non-US people brought over to fill them, and the people hired in overseas offices were dramatically better qualified than the US people we declined to hire.
pylua · 12h ago
I've also experienced this, and I completely agree. The reality is that you have to pay a very high salary in the US if you want someone to do a very good job. You probably have to recruit from the top universities, or the top candidate from other universities. Also, for a fraction of a US salary you can hire the very best bands in other countries, which is obviously a logical decision for any company to make.

That does not, however, excuse anyone from following the law.

I could be wrong, but the intent of the law is to encourage companies to train candidates to make them ready for the job. If you are just bringing in workers from other countries to work on us soil, even though there are us workers that can you do the job, in my mind you are essentially circumventing the intent of the law. This weakens the country for everyone.

Part of the problem right now with regards to skills is that there is essentially a threshold that has been crossed for outsourcing where the skills are just more prevalent in other countries. That's obviously not a great look for the United States.

s1artibartfast · 11h ago
Not surprising, but since when is something being hard or expensive a valid excuse to break the law?
bluedino · 13h ago
I like how the blame for everything gets deflected to the contracting company. Like Hyundai had no idea what was going on.

Similar things happen with stuff like workplace safety. "Shouldn't that guy be strapped into that lift?" No, he's with xxxx, they don't follow any rules. You can turn them in but nobody cares.

rasz · 11h ago
> freed and flown home

thats called _deported_

tibbydudeza · 22h ago
They were LG Chem workers to set up the battery manufacturing plant at the Hyundai facility - the paperwork was not filed correctly - LG probably did this a few times already as practice - the workers are in a compound situation and don't interact with the locals.

Somebody snitched no doubt.

eunos · 21h ago
There's a Georgian TikTok user that is claimed snitching them. Heard also that she's running for office.
Shank · 21h ago
Do you have any information about this happening in the past, or the "compound situation" etc?
ocdtrekkie · 21h ago
Seems like the sort of thing our administration really wants to discourage, right? Definitely should deport those folks trying to... move manufacturing to America.
ajross · 22h ago
Isn't "freed and flown home" the same thing as "deported"? These were routine professionals doing a job they took in good faith under rules and norms that have held for a century or more.
gruez · 22h ago
>Federal and immigration agents arrested 475 people on Thursday — mostly South Korean nationals — while executing a judicial search warrant as part of a criminal investigation into alleged unlawful employment at the facility.

> ...

>South Korea will “push forward measures to review and improve the residency status and visa system for personnel travelling to the United States.”

The implication seems to be that the workers didn't have authorization to work there.

ajross · 22h ago
> The implication seems to be that the workers didn't have authorization to work there.

No one ever does, by that standard. In the US, if you're a professional coming in to do some short-term thing, there's no visa process. You just fly in and get the stamp in your passport, which is technically treated as a "waiver of visa". Then you do your job and go home.

Like, have you every flown somewhere to attend a conference and a meeting? Same thing. Where's the "authorization"?

gruez · 22h ago
>Like, have you every flown somewhere to attend a conference and a meeting? Same thing. Where's the "authorization"?

Something tells me that working at a factory, even for "training" purposes is very different than attending a conference. Wikipedia confirms this:

>There are restrictions on the type of employment-related activities allowed. Meetings and conferences in relation to the travelers' profession, line of business or employer in their home country are generally acceptable, but most forms of "gainful employment" are not. There are however poorly-classifiable exceptions such as persons performing professional services in the United States for a non-U.S. employer, and persons installing, servicing and repairing commercial or industrial equipment or machinery pursuant to a contract of sale.[26] Performers (such as actors and musicians) who plan on performing live or taping scenes for productions in their country of origin, as well as athletes participating in an athletic event, are likewise not allowed to use the VWP for their respective engagements and are instead required to have an O or P visa prior to arrival. Foreign media representatives and journalists on assignment are required to have a nonimmigrant media (I) visa.[27]

ghaff · 21h ago
Even within the US, there's been something of a crackdown on out-of-state work from a tax perspective. Though it has been pretty inconsistent from what I've seen even if companies are starting to use auditors to track via expense reports--though, somewhat weirdly, they don't always follow state laws that are often set up around professional athletes and entertainers. Obviously most people have a right to work out-of-state but they may have to file appropriate tax returns.
lotsofpulp · 21h ago
> Obviously most people have a right to work out-of-state but they may have to file appropriate tax returns.

Which US resident would not have the right to work wherever they want in the US?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_Unit...

ghaff · 21h ago
I don't know. Weasel word :-) I could hypothesize court orders for whatever reason.
eesmith · 21h ago
Working out-of-state is different from freedom of movement.

For example, if you live in New Jersey and work in New York you are obligated to file tax returns to both states.

See also the "Jock tax", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jock_tax, "the jock tax is the colloquially named income tax levied against visitors to a city or state who earn money in that jurisdiction".

lotsofpulp · 21h ago
>Working out-of-state is different from freedom of movement.

It is the same in the US. I do not see how having to pay taxes prevents anyone from working in a place.

Tax policy and the legal right to work somewhere are two different things. As far as I know, no non-federal jurisdiction in the US can officially say people of xyz characteristics cannot work here. At least not yet.

Also, the jock tax is just income tax.

The only reason it has a name is because it is more difficult to audit and prove tax evasion for most other people that work in various locales, but do not pay income tax they are legally required to, whereas the public nature of the work of entertainers and large incomes makes it easy for a government to prove tax was owed. Which the wikipedia link says:

>Since a state cannot afford to track the many individuals who do business on an itinerant basis, the ones targeted are usually high profile and very wealthy, namely professional athletes. Not only are the working schedules of famous sports players public, so are their salaries. The state can compute and collect the amount with very little investment of time and effort.

eesmith · 18h ago
Absolutely nothing prevents anyone from working in a place. I don't see anyone in this thread saying otherwise.

ghaff's comment - the one you replied to - included "there's been something of a crackdown on out-of-state work from a tax perspective".

As you correctly point out, that's a different thing than the right to work somewhere.

lotsofpulp · 16h ago
> I don't see anyone in this thread saying otherwise.

ghaff wrote:

> most people have a right to work out-of-state

Which means some people do not. I was interested in who that would be.

ghaff · 16h ago
There may be state-related licensure requirements. Smaller companies, especially, may not be set up to have the legal provisions in place to handle employees living in all states.

There may be other things but I'm not an employment lawyer. So people can move but they may not continue to be employed across state lines.

Yes, in many cases, people can commute across state lines to do their actual work. But the companies often still need a legal entity in that person's state to pay them. I'll leave aside edge cases related to custodial matters and so forth.

throw0101c · 21h ago
> Something tells me that working at a factory, even for "training" purposes is very different than attending a conference.

Building a factory as part of a multi-billion investment.

Is the administration serious about re-industrialization? If they are, then if they find visa discrepancies of foreign nationals to that, perhaps they should help the foreigners sort out the discrepancies so they can continue to help the administration achieve its goals.

jacquesm · 3h ago
In this particular administration there is no coherence, so one hand will wreck what the other is trying to build.
Schnitz · 21h ago
Technically almost every white collar business traveler is working in the US illegally if you strictly apply the letter of the law. Let’s say you come here for two days of meetings and you are coding or doing some analysis on the third day before you fly home. You’ve now violated your business visa. The Trump administration can start enforcing the law like that and we’ll be even more screwed, because absolutely no non-US company will build anything if business travel to help spin up the office or plant is practically impossible.
lokar · 21h ago
And the same in other places. I’ve traveled to Europe many times without a work visa. I go to meetings, talk yo people and yes, write a bit of code. It’s what everyone does.
BurningFrog · 21h ago
Unless you're being paid a US wage by a US company this is practically impossible to discover, other than by raiding the office/factory like they did at Hyundai.
Schnitz · 13h ago
Technically they can raid any big tech company and I’m sure they’ll find some business travelers that are working between meetings.
ajross · 21h ago
It was a factory under construction. While, sure, the law is ambiguous (which is the whole point of having "norms" like this in the first place), surely you'd agree that their work falls under "persons installing, servicing and repairing commercial or industrial equipment or machinery pursuant to a contract of sale."

I just can't understand how anyone thinks that a "Surprise! You're in jail now!" change of enforcement norms like this is a good thing.

gruez · 21h ago
>It was a factory under construction. [...] surely you'd agree that their work falls under "persons installing, servicing and repairing commercial or industrial equipment or machinery pursuant to a contract of sale."

I can't tell whether you actually think the factory was under construction and therefore the exemption you mentioned would apply, or are trying to mislead people with some sneaky wording (ie. that it was under construction at some point). In any case according to wikipedia[1] it was constructed between 2022-2024, and "full production" (of cars, presumably) began in October 2024, almost a year ago. By all accounts it wasn't "under construction".

That said, I'm sure that something as complicated as a car factory would be continually upgraded and repaired, and maybe some of that would fall under "installing, servicing and repairing commercial or industrial equipment or machinery pursuant to a contract of sale", but at the same time that shouldn't be used as an excuse for multinationals to import arbitrary amount of foreign workers to work there, bypassing the normal visa process. Moreover it's questionable whether that "installing..." excuse would even hold. The OP article mentioned that over 400 workers, mostly south korean nationals were arrested in the raids, but another source[2] suggests the factory's employment is around 400 people. If it was really installing equipment, I'd expect it to be 5-10% of the factory's workforce, not 50-100%.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Motor_Group_Metaplant_...

[2] https://georgia.org/press-release/hyundai-supplier-pha-creat...

throw0101c · 21h ago
> In any case according to wikipedia[1] it was constructed between 2022-2024, and "full production" (of cars, presumably) began in October 2024, almost a year ago. By all accounts it wasn't "under construction".

As someone who has worked in IT for a few decades, I have had to go 'into production' with services while things still needed to be, and were still being, built out.

Factories are large and complex: just because one part has been deployed doesn't mean another part has. One simple possibility: they went 'into production' being able to produce X units per week, but work was being done to be able to expand to X+30% units.

lokar · 20h ago
The car factory has been done for a while. What was being fitted out was a new LG battery factory next to it.
lars_francke · 21h ago
That is not true.

There is a process, it's usually tedious but it exists. I did it for Singapore, the US and Israel. They mostly took multiple months but I never wanted to take any chances. For the US it was a "B-1 in lieu of H-1B" visa for example.

Attending a conference is something different than what these workers did. There are rules around what a "business trip" is and what is not and what "work" is.

xadhominemx · 21h ago
There are visa types specifically created for this sort of situation (e.g. E2 visas). But those visas are only available to certain nationals and South Koreans are not among them, which is very stupid given the strong commercial and strategic ties between the USA and South Korea.
abcd_f · 21h ago
> Like, have you every flown somewhere to attend a conference and a meeting? Same thing.

I flew to an expo where our company had a booth and the US border patrol took me aside and started asking if I'd be selling things there or working at the booth in some other form. I told them that I am a tech going to see other companies' stuff. They then discussed something between themselves for 10 minutes and let me pass. This was 20 years ago, so them being picky is certainly not a new thing.

ghaff · 19h ago
When there were custom forms everyone had to fill out, as I recall, one of the questions was whether you had samples or goods for sale (or something like that). Priorities have probably shifted but direct commercial activities probably remain a concern even in countries that generally have no issue with you attending a conference or meeting with customers.
ajmurmann · 21h ago
The fact that something normal, we need to happen as a country, is ambiguous and sparks a 10 minute discussion is the big red flag. Immigration and business visits need to be clear and quick. We need naive immigration reform.
stackskipton · 21h ago
US needs immigration reform bad but problem is you have two competing sides. Plenty of companies want to bring in cheaper/visa tied workers and US workers who want to protect their wages. Few voters have any faith in politicians to not completely screw over average American.
ajmurmann · 11h ago
And apparently many Americans lack confidence in their own ability to perform better than people who barely speak the local language whose supervisor they could become.
nemo44x · 21h ago
I’m guessing they were doing that or similar but doing more than is scoped for that. And everyone has probably been doing this for a long time for short term specialist tasks, so it’s industry practice now.
wombatpm · 21h ago
This administration is taking people who dutifully show up for court hearings as part of their asylum claims and shipping them back to their country of origin.

To make it worse, they are sending their confidential asylum paperwork to the country directly.

The South Koreans are lucky they are being sent to the correct Korea.

Discordian93 · 21h ago
"Deported" now seems to be an euphemism for being sent to a concentration camp in a random third world country, so I guess they have to use different language for actual deportations.
joezydeco · 22h ago
The one detail I can't seem to find anywhere was what type of visa these SK nationals used to enter the US, and if they overstayed.

This isn't exactly new territory. A lot of countries are very careful to avoid letting you in on a tourist visa if you give off the appearance of entering to work.

ghaff · 22h ago
As a tech person, I've never had trouble entering Europe from the US to go to a conference or whatever but I'd be very careful with respect to honorariums or expenses being covered for speaking, etc., which I have heard of people getting in trouble over. (Of course, some countries do have explicit requirements for business-related visits.)
dmix · 20h ago
Every country is careful with rules like that. The main difference is the US has been the #1 destination for almost everyone in the world to work/live for decades, so it's a major supply/demand issue that border guards have to deal with. People often compare it to European countries. Random countries that are people's 15th choice to immigrate, where they don't need to try as hard with enforcement. Or at least didn't until recently, since Europe also began experiencing American-southern border style immigration issues.
BurningFrog · 21h ago
South Koreans, like most developed countries, get an automatic 90 day B-1 "visa waiver" visa when entering.
fsckboy · 21h ago
some had no visas, some had tourist visas, some had expired visas
firesteelrain · 21h ago
Well this extra context makes what ICE did totally understandable. I would expect any country to do the same.
VBprogrammer · 21h ago
The crackdown is certainly being done for the wrong reasons but it does seem strange to me just how much of the US is built around the idea of a second class of citizens who don't have documentation. It seems like a significant portion of farmworkers, construction, hospitality and childcare are routinely done by people who aren't legally in the country.

I'm sure there is more of this than in Europe than I'm aware of (food delivery is one example we're recently had a lot of focus on in the UK) but it's certainly not at the point that it's routine and expected.

How does this work? Are these people somehow paying taxes regardless of their immigration status?

toast0 · 20h ago
> How does this work? Are these people somehow paying taxes regardless of their immigration status?

Some jobs are cash jobs, the employer doesn't report the income and the employee likely doesn't either, this isn't legal for the employer or the employee, but enforcement is uneven.

For jobs with proper payroll, income reporting and employment tax withholding, it's common to 'borrow' someone else's tax id. That's not legal either of course, although the employer may be ok if they were reasonably unaware of the borrowing. If the borrowed tax id is only used for work by one person, and the withholding is close to correct (or a tax return is filed for that tax id), then taxes are being paid properly, even if they're attributed incorrectly. If the tax id is used by multiple people, then the combined income might be subject to a larger tax than if earned by multiple tax ids, and withholding is likely to be iffy (withholding tables are built around a single job).

I think I've heard of ways for someone without work authorization to get their own tax idea so they can have make properly attributed tax payments, but I don't remember the details.

firesteelrain · 20h ago
Your questions are valid however diverges from the main point. The South Korean citizens in question were breaking the law. Whether we agree on ICE’s approach and how that reflects on optics is more of a political question for this administration. Clearly, the South Korean citizens were not following established US Visa Law and Policy.
ajross · 16h ago
That is simply not true. Automatic/assumed visa waivers has been the way international professionals do temporary work in the US for many decades. Yes, the state department and DHS after it have always had the ability to revoke this waiver when abused. But there is simply no abuse alleged here. They showed up to build a factory, made no attempt to hide that fact, and that's exactly what they were "caught" doing.

This "Yooz Brok Duh Lah" absolutism is a transparently political excuse for what is very obviously a norm-breaking and unjust enforcement of a law that was working very well.

firesteelrain · 13h ago
I think the premise is off. DHS said some detainees were on the Visa Waiver Program, which only permits business visits and forbids employment. Others were on B-1, which covers meetings or limited training but not factory construction. DHS also mentioned expired or improper visas. We do not have a full manifest, so some roles may have been lawful, but the evidence presented so far shows that at least some of those detained were not following the rules of their visa.
VBprogrammer · 15h ago
As a reasonably impartial observer, I think the truth here is somewhere in the middle. Like almost any large American factory, there are going to be some handful of people who are illegal immigrants through some means or other (if I understand correctly they had a warrant for 4 Latina people). Sweeping up anyone there who didn't have an iron clad visa, I imagine that was just a political play.
dmix · 20h ago
There's been a successive series of US federal administrations that gave them a pass, either through lack of enforcement or inventing temporary work visas that also covered people who already illegally immigrated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_protected_status Biden expanded this authority to cover ~1.2M new people

Also in states like California they let undocumented immigrants get drivers licenses. They can even get bank accounts and mortgages in some states (which is basically impossible here in Canada).

ericfr11 · 15h ago
They still need to prove residency. They also cannot vote, and this is not a legal status: just the right to drive
ajross · 22h ago
> The one detail I can't seem to find anywhere was what type of visa these SK nationals used to enter the US, and if they overstayed.

Because there is no visa process for short term professional work in the US, and never has been.

> A lot of countries are very careful to avoid letting you in on a tourist visa if you give off the appearance of entering to work.

That's just wrong. Virtually the entirety of the professional world travels around between industrial countries on tourist visas. Otherwise anyone going to a trade show is an "illegal" at risk of deportation.

detaro · 21h ago
There's work and work. Most "tourist" visa will cover things like attending conferences or tradeshows, meetings with a different branch of your employer or customers etc, but on the other side more dedicated work, conference talks you are compensated for, ... can quickly be treated differently.

And if you don't come from a preferred part of the world even the former can quickly be quite a process to prove it.

ghaff · 21h ago
Exactly. Being nervous, of a "suspicious" ethnicity, giving any indication that you're being paid for being in the country, can probably all lead to issues. As I wrote elsewhere, aside from some countries that require a visa for any explicit business activity, a basic visa is typically fine to go to a conference or meet with a customer, much less send some emails.
ehnto · 21h ago
That is my impression of travelling to the US right now. Non zero risk of baseless detainment and deportation, and a non zero risk of being sent to a different country than the one you live in.

No thanks. I'll stream the conference online.

metrix · 22h ago
I don't quite understand what happened other than "deported by ICE".
sb8244 · 22h ago
The article makes it sound as if there were govt negotiations to have them sent home. It is light on details though, but with that many people of a friendly nation / corporation I imagine they get treated differently.

I interpreted that to mean they may not have permanent US immigration issues vs "being deported".

fsckboy · 21h ago
the national debate and evolving policies wrt deportations the past year has focused on:

1. getting those with criminal records depoarted and not allowed back (a fair number of whom have been depoted and have violated the ban on returning)

2. getting those who've wished to settle and work jobs to leave voluntarily by buying them plane tickets and giving them cash stipends and not barring their reentry in the future

These Koreans who came to Georgia on behalf of their company will probably not have their tickets paid for by the US nor get the stipend, so yes, they are treated differently as you suggest.

after the surprise arrests executing the judicial warrant, the Korean company and government stepped forward and expressed a commitment to helping these workers, which occurred without negotiation, although you could call the flurry of phone calls after that negotiations, it was probably more like "Q; what do we need to do" "A: you need to bring them home". neither country nor the companies involved is looking to disturb relations, though perhaps this is adjacent to a tariff negotiation.

jacquesm · 20h ago
> neither country nor the companies involved is looking to disturb relations

Relations are disturbed. You can take that to the bank. The SK government just stepped up for their citizens as they should. But US/SK relations just got dinged.

fsckboy · 6h ago
i didn't say neither country wanted to control its borders, visas, employment etc, but that's all consular stuff or domestic/border policing.

at the ambassaor/embassy/diplomatic level state to state, there will be no effect on relations because neither country wants that. We are important allies and major trading partners, this is a matter of minor corruption.

you're smarter than this, don't read/comment selectively to stay on your hobby horses. this does not bring us closer to the inevitable contradictions of capitalism and the revolution.

s1artibartfast · 12h ago
Most of the conflict occurs when the country of origin refuses to accept the deportees, for whatever reason. I don't imagine this will be the case with South Korea.
notpachet · 21h ago
> 2. getting those who've wished to settle and work jobs to leave voluntarily by buying them plane tickets and not barring their reentry in the future

If you think the current administration is giving cash stipends to anyone it's been working to deport as part of its dragnet, I have a very large bridge to sell you.

fsckboy · 20h ago
it's a real policy (it's an app), provide a link if you have a source that says it's not, otherwise you're just unproductively snarking. it's certainly cost effective, a few thousand voluntary is much cheaper than administrative means.
notpachet · 18h ago
I have friends who've been deported without criminal records. They didn't get paid anything. I don't know what you're talking about.

I'll repeat what I said:

> If you think the current administration is giving cash stipends to anyone it's been working to deport as part of its dragnet

What policy or app says "when ICE deports people, give them a stipend" ?

Edit: Here's the ICE manual on how deportations are conducted[1]. There's no mention of cash payouts.

[1] https://www.ice.gov/doclib/foia/dro_policy_memos/09684drofie...

fsckboy · 6h ago
as I said before, the program is to volunteer to go home prior to being deported by the govt; the point is by volunteering you save the cost of deportation (agents, lawyers, court time, incarceration, transportation)

so if your friends were deported before applying, then it's too late because that deportation already cost the govt money.

the program is only months old, so if your friends got deported before that it wouldn't apply.

you have to apply for the program (I think you just download the app and sign up) in advance, you can't just return home and then apply.

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/05/dhs-announces-historic-t...

https://www.ice.gov/self-deportation

notpachet · 3h ago
Interesting. I missed this. Thanks.
dfxm12 · 21h ago
"Deported" has several meanings, especially in recent context for deportees from the USA. One can be deported to a detention facility in a country one has no ties to, for example. This unfortunately has happened often enough that it is important to distinguish exactly which flavor of deportation is happening...
rayiner · 21h ago
> One can be deported to a detention facility in a country one has no ties to, for example.

You're only sent to a third country if you insist on not being deported back to your home country.

treetalker · 21h ago
Before IIRIRA in 1996, US immigration law had separate processes for deportation and exclusion. Since then, we have a single, unified process called removal. So technically deportation no longer exists. It is more proper to say that someone is being removed.
skybrian · 22h ago
Yes, but it still seems like relatively good news for temporary workers who have a home in a safe country to go back to. We’re not talking about Haiti.
eunos · 21h ago
It's a bit different since they "srlf-deport" before the government formally deport them. That mean they are not banned from coming to the US next time.
rayiner · 22h ago
It sounds like there is no real dispute that the folks being deported were working illegally. The NYT says some folks with visas or citizenship were initially detained but then released: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us/georgia-battery-plant-.... None appear to be Hyundai employees. The plant was under investigation for a significant amount of time as well.

Where are the goalposts? Are you suggesting that some people found to be working illegally shouldn’t be deported? You should listen to this excellent podcast by the NYT about how our “norms” of non-enforcement of our immigration laws has consistently been contrary to what politicians told the public: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi.... Politicians have been baiting and switching the public on immigration since 1965.

dtjb · 21h ago
Norms and goalposts aside, what’s the value in adopting a formal policy of harassment against non-criminal, non-violent workers?

Congress can debate immigration laws on the books, but this cultural shift seems to be something else entirely. Instead of measured enforcement, it appears to be the normalization of cruelty. We're punishing people who are part of the workforce contributing to our country's economic output.

Seems like the real question is, what do we get out of this? Because it doesn't appear to be aligned with security or prosperity. It's just needless suffering, bureaucracy, and wasted resources.

gruez · 21h ago
>Norms and goalposts aside, what’s the value in adopting a formal policy of harassment against non-criminal, non-violent workers?

Deterring irregular economic migration? If the government adopts a non-formal policy of not prosecuting non-criminal non-violent workers, it's implicitly saying it's fine to people to violate immigration laws and come here to work, as long as you don't cause trouble. You might think this is fine because free movement of labor is good or whatever, but that's not what most Americans want.

dtjb · 21h ago
Americans don’t want economic growth, or don’t want foreigners in the country?

I feel like we should be honest - Americans are perfectly comfortable picking and choosing when laws get enforced. We do it all the time. We don’t treat every law as sacred. Enforcement is selective in a million other areas, from antitrust to wage theft to pollution. Nobody insists those must be pursued to the letter every single time.

So why single out immigration as the one area where “the law is the law” trumps any rational or humane appeal? It starts to look less like a principled stand on legal consistency and more like a cultural preference. One that just happens to line up with race and class anxieties rather than some universal devotion to the rule of law.

onetimeusename · 19h ago
>It starts to look less like a principled stand on legal consistency and more like a cultural preference.

I think there's an implicit cultural preference when people argue in favor of more immigration though. It's also just assumed immigrants themselves don't have cultural preferences when it seems they do. On the one hand there's an argument made against cultural preferences but on the other we see things like ethnic neighborhoods such as barrios develop and then those are defended and diversity is said to be our strength. So I don't think it is consistent to be pro immigration and anti cultural preference.

rayiner · 16h ago
> It's also just assumed immigrants themselves don't have cultural preferences when it seems they do

Of course we do! We don’t even pretend otherwise. I went to a Bangladeshi wedding in Toronto a couple of years ago. A friend of the groom’s family said to my dad that it was too bad my brother and I couldn’t find Bangladeshi women to marry. This is probably not the median view among Bangladeshis in Canada, but it’s within the Overton window—to the point where our response to this comment was to say something ambiguous about the place where we live having few Bangladeshis. And most Bangladeshis I know still marry within the community even in the U.S.

But of course there is a double standard here. Brown people aren’t treated as having moral agency. Bangladeshis in America can express extreme in-group preference and nobody will say anything. But it’s utterly taboo for whites to do the same.

rayiner · 20h ago
You're attacking a strawman. Immigration law is like any other quota law. The point isn't whether a single person has satisfied a legal formality. The point is to regulate the aggregate scale of the activity through a legal procedure. It's like county fishing or park visitor licenses that are made available for a nominal fee or for free. The point isn't the license itself, it's to control the aggregate volume of fishing or visitors to the parks.

Similarly with immigration, the purpose of the legal formalities is to constrain immigration volume. If you think those volumes are not high enough, you can advocate to increase them. In 60% of polling this issue, Gallup has found that the support for increasing immigration has never exceeded 34%, and was under 10% from 1965-2000.

As to the rationales for limiting the volume of immigration, they are two-fold. One, people don't buy the argument that immigrants are good for them economically. Economists have lots of theories about public policy that people don't buy, like the idea of getting rid of corporate taxes: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-.... Two, people have cultural preferences and want to limit the scope of cultural change. That's a perfectly legitimate rationale for limiting immigration. People in the Bay Area would be pretty upset if internal migration made Mountain View culturally more like Alabama. People in Wyoming would be upset if immigration made their town more like New Jersey. And those are people in the same country!

oa335 · 15h ago
> In 60% of polling this issue, Gallup has found that the support for increasing immigration has never exceeded 34%, and was under 10% from 1965-2000.

From 2016 until now, Gallup polling has found that over 50% of the country supported increasing immigration or keeping it at the same levels.

In 2024 (height of anti immigrant sentiment in Gallup polls) only 47% supported “ Deporting all immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home country”, eroding to 38% in 2025.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigratio...

Anyone who purports to believe in the primacy of popular will should raise an eyebrow at the discordance between popular opinions and the political discourse surrounding immigration - unless of course their appeals to populism are merely fig leaf rationalizations?

rayiner · 12h ago
> From 2016 until now, Gallup polling has found that over 50% of the country supported increasing immigration or keeping it at the same levels.

The factual trend over that period has been ever-escalating immigration levels. So it does not make sense to lump the people who support keeping immigration at the same level along with the folks who support increasing it.

jacquesm · 20h ago
> You're attacking a strawman.

You are defending a criminal.

- it is not normal for the military to be sent to cities and locations that are run by political enemies to round up people

- putting people in concentration camps (that's what they are) is not normal.

- deporting people without due process is not normal

- using the military for policing duties is not normal

You're a lawyer. All of this should horrify you.

The USA was on the right path with decreasing immigration by making its neighbors more wealthy. Guess who ended that? The Trump regime creates problems which then only the Trump regime can solve, which is a game older than politics. And you're falling for it, hook, line and sinker.

rayiner · 20h ago
Your country has detention centers as well: https://www.government.nl/topics/return-of-foreign-citizens/.... The U.S. is an outlier in allowing deportable people to remain free pending their deportation proceedings.

For deportation the only "due process" is checking that someone is not in the country legally.

Many European countries use the military for policing, including your own.

As a lawyer, what horrifies me is six decades of non-enforcement of our immigration laws.

jacquesm · 19h ago
Yes, I know we have detention centers. Believe me I'm not happy about them.

> The U.S. is an outlier in allowing deportable people to remain free pending their deportation proceedings.

The US is an outlier in relying wholesale on an illegal workforce without representation and without healthcare or access to the legal system to keep their economy afloat.

> For deportation the only "due process" is checking that someone is not in the country legally.

Sorry, and given that this is a point of law, you are utterly wrong on this, which makes me wonder what else you are wrong about where you are so confident.

https://www.vera.org/news/what-does-due-process-mean-for-imm...

Have a read, and maybe adjust your priors a bit.

> Many European countries use the military for policing, including your own.

You keep saying that, here and elsewhere. But it just isn't true.

> As a lawyer, what horrifies me is six decades of non-enforcement of our immigration laws.

That is very much not true and you know it. The biggest problem with US immigration law is that it is (1) ridiculously complex (2) dealt with by understaffed entities (3) kept in place because industry and agriculture more or less depend on it and (4) effectively makes the country a vast amount of money.

If you're so horrified by it then you can blame your parents for picking a country to emigrate to that was soft on emigration. You can't pin this on the emigrants, many of whom were in the USA well before you were even born.

Meanwhile, you're on the record as a lawyer that argues incessantly on behalf of a government that is doing their level best to destroy the justice system that you've grown up in and that you - ostensibly - support. An extrajudicial assassination or two - let alone 11 - doesn't even cause a raised eyebrow, and mass deportations without so much as a chance of legal review doesn't either.

rayiner · 17h ago
So you don’t like your own country’s immigration policies either? https://apnews.com/article/migration-netherlands-wilders-asy.... Maybe the problem is you?
jacquesm · 16h ago
No, indeed I don't like Wilders and his ridiculous approach to immigration, which is utterly unrealistic and has caused the downfall of several of our governments. And every time someone actually wants to really do something that might just work Wilders is of course against it because if that were to happen his whole reason for his continued employment would fall away.

> Maybe the problem is you?

You mean: because I hold a minority opinion I'm the one that is wrong? No, that's not how it works, not here and not in the general case. The fact that someone holds an opinion and whether or not a larger group of individuals holds a different opinion is not how you determine where the problem lies or who is wrong.

You do that by careful analysis of the underlying facts. And for NL those facts are quite complex, far more complex than Mr. Wilders and his merry band of incompetents makes it out to be. But that doesn't matter for him, in that sense Trump and Wilders are one and the same: push the fear button, as hard as you can and there will be plenty of people that vote for you.

To assume that populism is automatically right is a fairly big error and history is rife with examples of proof of that so I take it you won't be asking for citations.

rayiner · 15h ago
It’s not complicated. The pro-immigration people proceeded from a premise that turned out to be false. They thought you could pluck someone out of Syria or Iraq and put them in the Netherlands and the result would be indistinguishable (except in superficial appearance) from descendants of William of Orange. Had that premise proven true, nobody would know Geert Wilders’s name.

But it wasn’t true. It was a conceptual mistake closely related to George W. Bush’s erroneous belief that he could turn Afghanistan and Iraq into America through laws on paper. And that’s had tremendous downstream consequences.

jacquesm · 14h ago
> The pro-immigration people proceeded from a premise that turned out to be false. They thought you could pluck someone out of Syria or Iraq and put them in the Netherlands and the result would be indistinguishable (except in superficial appearance) from descendants of William of Orange.

I have absolutely no idea where you got this utterly bizarre notion of what went on in the Netherlands in the last 50 years or so. This is so far besides the point that you probably should just take the L and move on. But on the off chance that you are open to some input:

Syrians and Iraqi people in NL are here predominantly as refugees.

> Had that premise proven true, nobody would know Geert Wilders’s name.

No, we've had Geert Wilders like persons in different guises in the past. None managed to convert it into a life-long jobs program for themselves though.

> But it wasn’t true.

This has to be the mother of all strawmen ever on HN. You are just simply clueless about this.

> It was a conceptual mistake closely related to George W. Bush’s erroneous belief that he could turn Afghanistan and Iraq into America through laws on paper.

That too is completely disconnected from reality as documented in untold millions of pages of history.

> And that’s had tremendous downstream consequences.

Yes, there were tremendous downstream consequences. But you utterly missed the connection about the causes, which in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq go back to 1839 or so.

rayiner · 12h ago
> Syrians and Iraqi people in NL are here predominantly as refugees.

What difference does that make? The point is that they didn't start behaving exactly like Dutch people when they stepped on Dutch soil.

jacquesm · 11h ago
The point is that you strongly suggest that we collectively expected them to do just that, when nobody did that. So it makes a big difference on why they are here, they had nowhere else to go, we made room for them, collectively, and tried to make it work. Not always equally successful but for the most part it did. Their kids are doing a lot better than their parents (I see plenty of them in the schools of my children).

But, in an interesting turn of affairs, the same groups that were screaming 'foreigners!!! they'll take our jobs!!! they'll take our women!!! they are not Christians!!!' about Indonesian people in the 60's, Surinam people in the 70's, Turks in the 80's, Moroccans in the 90's, Poles, Romanians, Latvians, Armenians, Iraqis, Iranians, Syrians and Afghans in the two decades after that are perfectly ok with it as long as it allows them to cling to their fears and stoke the division. Never mind that those first waves are now all but indistinguishable from the rest here.

There still is a massive disadvantage to being non-white, so Poles, Latvians and Ukrainians have an easier time of it. And it will take a long time before that difference has been leveled, if ever. Unfortunately.

ajross · 16h ago
You are exhausting.

Here you're conflating "law" (the rule supposed to be followed) with "policy" (the mechanism used to enforce that rule). One can be broadly in favor of controls on aggregate immigration and still horrified at the means[1] chosen.

You really don't see how reasonable people might disagree with you?

[1] In this case[2] rounding up working engineers doing a job we all agree we want done via means that have been the norm since the 50's.

[2] The literally masked secret police force and salvadoran gulag things are sore points too.

rayiner · 15h ago
I’m not conflating anything. The actual effect of your “norm” has been vastly higher immigration than what is set forth in the law. So why would we continue to follow a norm that guts the law?
ajross · 14h ago
Because it's wasn't putting clearly innocent people in jail? I mean... you get that, right? That there are worse things than "vastly higher immigration" that people might actually care about?
s1artibartfast · 12h ago
Who is innocent? My understanding is the number of legal citizens and residents detained and deported is nonzero, but close. Everyone being deported broke the law in some form or another.
jacquesm · 12h ago
> Who is innocent?

Quite a few people by now, as a percentage of the total given the numbers involved. Oh, sucks to be them I guess...

> My understanding is the number of legal citizens and residents detained and deported is nonzero, but close.

Well, those people would be the innocent ones then, and 'close' isn't good enough for legal purposes. Wouldn't it be just too bad if you were the one to be deported as a result of one of these razzias? Or would you see your own deportation as taking one for the good of the country?

> Everyone being deported broke the law in some form or another.

Allegedly broke the law.

s1artibartfast · 12h ago
Close is all that is possible with human systems. The alternative is giving up on all legal action, because every single one is fallible.

Would you forego all law enforcement in your own country because of a nonzero error rate?

jacquesm · 11h ago
> Close is all that is possible with human systems.

Yes, but there is 'close' with trying to get it as good as you can and there is 'close' without even trying. With is obviously better. To me, at least, even if it is slower.

> The alternative is giving up on all legal action, because every single one is fallible.

No, the alternative is to do your very best and to only disrupt lives when you have to, not just because you can. That's harder than just black and white and that is where judges come in and why people have a right to due process.

> Would you forego all law enforcement in your own country because of a nonzero error rate?

I don't think that's the choice. The choice is between having law enforcement that is bound by rules and law enforcement that is not bound by rules. The latter is - to me - unacceptable. I think everybody has a right to due process.

The last time we had a regime in NL that did not agree with that thesis is still very much in living memory here so I don't think you're going to find a lot of takers for Razzias and mass deportations. If that were to happen here in NL I'd find the nearest barricade and join the resistance. And I'm pretty sure I would not be alone in that.

s1artibartfast · 9h ago
All the concern from our European friends strikes me as somewhat hypocritical. My understanding is that NL has administrative deportations as well, essentially the same legal process the US is using. They also have a history of being much tighter immigration enforcement than the USA.

It especially seems like pearl clutching in the context of this article. What would the NL do if Tesla or some such was found to be employing hundreds of illegal workers without proper visas? Would they be deported and would you grab a molotov join the resistance?

I think most reasonable people can agree officials should be bound by rules and law. There as substantial difference on what people think those rules are.

There is also a huge subset of people that care nothing of the law, and think deportations are illegal because they don't agree with their politics.

jacquesm · 2h ago
> My understanding is that NL has administrative deportations as well, essentially the same legal process the US is using.

With as massive difference that we don't do razzias by masked people arresting as many people as they can to meet their quota.

See, we still have a functional legal system here where you can get your day in court, even as an immigrant, illegal or otherwise. Not that there aren't voices like Trump's here in NL, clearly we have those idiots here too. And unfortunately they are doing well in the polls. But for the moment, there are still crucial differences between NL and the USA when it comes to the rule of law.

> They also have a history of being much tighter immigration enforcement than the USA.

That depends. There is first of all the massive difference between six different groups of countries:

- the neighboring countries of Luxembourg and Belgium with whom we have been in a kind of mini-EU for many decades

- then there are the main trading partners France, Germany and until recently the UK with whom we had very good reciprocal relationships.

- Then there are the - mostly former - colonies.

- Then there are the countries in the Schengen area of the EU

- then the rest of the EU countries.

- Then we have some long running friendship programs with for instance, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan

- Then we have exceptions for students from all over the world

- Then there are refugees from war zones

- Then there are refugees for other reasons (for instance: because they are persecuted in the country they are from for their religion or sexual preferences)

- and then there is everybody else

As you can see, it gets complicated.

If NL would find that Tesla was employing hundreds of illegal workers without proper visa's I'm fairly sure that they would first look at what the actual damage is and how the situation could be addressed. There likely would be a joint effort by EZ and Immigration to work out what should be done and this would then be implemented. At no point anywhere in that process do I see a razzia of a construction side as even a remote possibility.

> Would they be deported and would you grab a molotov join the resistance?

That's not how resistance works here in NL, but if they did start violence against what we call guest workers here, then yes, I would definitely come to their defense and so would a couple of hundred thousand other Dutch people. Simply because we are more than happy to serve as check on our authorities when they start doing inhumane stuff.

> I think most reasonable people can agree officials should be bound by rules and law. There as substantial difference on what people think those rules are.

Well, one thing that is simple is that there is an automatic right to due process here, no matter what the crime. And that right to due process includes a right to appeal and then if you have had your day(s) in court and have lost then in fact you can be deported and this does actually happen.

> There is also a huge subset of people that care nothing of the law, and think deportations are illegal because they don't agree with their politics.

That could be, but I don't personally know any such people.

TimorousBestie · 11h ago
> Close is all that is possible with human systems. The alternative is giving up on all legal action, because every single one is fallible.

There are other alternatives. Many countries have rational immigration rules and enforcement.

> Would you forego all law enforcement in your own country because of a nonzero error rate?

A blatant false dilemma.

s1artibartfast · 9h ago
What do those rational immigration rules and enforcement look like? From my perspective, the US is still more lax than most of Europe.

None have birthright citizenship. None have an ongoing global amnesty program like the USA. AFAIK, All have administrative deportations without jury trial. Some countries require dual registration of every resident by landlords and tenants to verify residence.

I think the republican right dreams of the type of immigration controls that are common in Europe.

>A blatant false dilemma.

The dilemma is forced if "close isn't good enough". It is a reasonable conclusion from the statement.

TimorousBestie · 7h ago
> The dilemma is forced if "close isn't good enough". It is a reasonable conclusion from the statement.

If you believe this, then there’s nothing to discuss. In your ontology, my stance is equivalent to having absolutely no law enforcement whatsoever.

s1artibartfast · 7h ago
I have no clue what your stance is. I was responding to someone else. You are correct about the point I was making. If someone demands perfection or nothing, they are advocating for nothing.
Larrikin · 21h ago
Republican voters are not most Americans
gruez · 20h ago
see: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/HHP...

Note that what I said was that most americans do not support "it's fine to people to violate immigration laws and come here to work, as long as you don't cause trouble". That's not the same as "ICE raids as currently implemented" or even "don't offer current pathway to citizenship for current undocumented workers".

rayiner · 19h ago
The difference is more about the appetite for aggressive enforcement than the underlying policy. There is little appetite in either party for increasing the volume of legal immigration.

Also, you can’t lump non-voters in with the immigration proponents. Multiple studies have found that Trump would’ve won by an even larger margin if everyone would have voted: https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec... https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2...

rayiner · 21h ago
> Congress can debate immigration laws on the books, but this cultural shift seems to be something else entirely. Instead of measured enforcement, it appears to be the normalization of cruelty.

That's because Congress has been promising "measured enforcement" for 60 years, but in that time the foreign-born population has ballooned from 4.7% in 1970 to 15.6% in 2024--higher than it ever was in the 20th century. The goal is big, visible enforcement actions that will disincentivize people from immigrating above the limits set forth in the law.

dtjb · 21h ago
I fail to see how the percentage of foreign born citizens is a problem in any way.
dfxm12 · 20h ago
It's only a problem for white supremacists.
rayiner · 20h ago
It's only "white supremacy" if you'd object to, e.g. a majority-Bangladeshi town or neighborhood where people behaved indistinguishably from people in Idaho, Wyoming, or Vermont. But if assimilation was real--if people could be transplanted from one cultural context to another seamlessly--opposition to immigration would be almost non-existent.
ViewTrick1002 · 15h ago
It is interesting how far the American Overton window [0] has shifted. With white supremacy now being featured on HN.

I truly never could comprehend how Hitler got to power. Now we’re seeing it in action, and it scares me.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

jacquesm · 15h ago
> I truly never could comprehend how Hitler got to power.

There are two great movies about this. 'The Third Wave' and 'Er ist wieder da'.

Of course we have reality now and we see how ostensibly smart people are lured in by soundbites and simple solutions to complicated problems. The dumb ones I can't really blame but the smart ones are a much bigger problem. They twist and turn like eels on a hook to try to justify that which can't be justified at all, not even in the abstract. And yet, they persist. And in doing so they normalize the language and the attitude that goes with that. It's like watching something viral replicate.

> Now we’re seeing it in action, and it scares me.

Yes, it scares me too. It scares me in ways that I did not think I could be scared. It scares me to the point that I wonder if we're not already past the point of no return, that this - like WWII - has to burn out before things can get better again. Assuming there will be anything left. Too many forces are working really hard to destabilize the world that we've come to take for granted.

What I have realized though is that at the head of these movements are a relatively small number of people, each with their own agenda. And you have to wonder: if it hadn't been Hitler, who would have come to power there? None of the cast that we know had the power of oration that Hitler had, his ability to make people believe that he had the answers, when he clearly did not. The dissatisfaction of the German populace with the outcome of WWI and the finger pointing are very much reminiscent of what is happening right now in many places all over the world. The exact same patterns. And instead of radio (which never lost its power) we now have the TV and the internet to push our buttons and make us act against our own interests.

'May you live in interesting times' always was a curse, not a blessing.

onetimeusename · 8h ago
What are some solutions to the complicated problems?

I don't mean to put words in your mouth but what you are describing is an anti-Fascist worldview. To be clear, that means you believe Hitler-esque figures and fascism leading to mass destruction are recurring patterns to be avoided. So would being anti-Fascist require a commitment to more immigration? Would you say criticism of immigration should be suppressed because it's being used by demagogues to gain power?

jacquesm · 3h ago
> What are some solutions to the complicated problems?

You want a book sized comment? And it would be a different book for every country on the planet. And it wouldn't matter because people will vote based on their fears anyway.

> I don't mean to put words in your mouth but what you are describing is an anti-Fascist worldview.

Oh, Golly, that is just terrible.

> To be clear, that means you believe Hitler-esque figures and fascism leading to mass destruction are recurring patterns to be avoided.

No shit.

> So would being anti-Fascist require a commitment to more immigration?

I can't quite follow your logic here.

> Would you say criticism of immigration should be suppressed because it's being used by demagogues to gain power?

I can't follow your logic here either.

See, that's the problem. You ask for what my solutions would be to complicated problems and then you ask questions on the order of 'when did you stop beating your wife' expecting a simple and short answer to a problem that requires much thought and reflection on root causes and what can be done about them.

With that mindset I'd say you are no longer arguing in good faith anymore but just looking for ways to win silly points. If you really want to have a discussion about what could be done about this it would require you first to get off that horse that you are on that assumes that progress can be made by answering dumb questions like those.

Let's start with some more intelligent questions:

- What is the root cause of emigration for the people that choose to emigrate?

- Are those root causes amendable to change or are they givens?

- If they are amendable to change what is the timescale on which that change would need to take place for it to have an effect on emigration?

- What other parties are required to effect this change, is it just two countries or is it more of them?

- What budgets would be required to effect these changes?

- Is there political and societal buy in in the countries that will end up paying for that?

And so on. And each of those is a project of multiple months and can most likely only be properly researched in any two countries so that makes this a vastly complicated project requiring significant resources. Unfortunately the organizations that could - and to some degree have done - do this kind of work have been pretty much dismantled in the USA.

rayiner · 20h ago
You're welcome to your belief, but that puts you in an extreme minority not only among Americans, but among people anywhere in the world. It's simply a fact that culture is real, that it shapes the society, and that immigrants bring foreign culture with them in ways that change the destination society. https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran... ("In The Culture Transplant, Garett Jones documents the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands—toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government—that persist for decades, and likely for centuries, in their new national homes. Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth. And the cultural traits migrants bring to their new homes have enduring effects upon a nation's economic potential.").

I'm a foreigner myself. Even though I grew up in the U.S. since age 5, the cultural difference between me and my wife (whose family immigrated here from Britain before the American Revolution) are stark. I think most Americans have a hard time understanding just how foreign their foreign-born acquaintances are, because many of the differences are below the surface: https://opengecko.com/geckoview/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/C....

ericfr11 · 15h ago
This argument has no weight. First, a lot of people in the US are in favor of multi-cultural society: from St Patrick's (Irish) to Cinco de Mayo (Mexican), ... If anything, the US is a multi-cultural nation from the beginning: German was almost the official language of the US. Railroads would not have been built without the Chinese. NY pizza wouldn't exist without the Italians. And more. We need some laws obviously, but let's stop pretending the US is a single culture
acdha · 21h ago
> Politicians have been baiting and switching the public on immigration since 1965.

This is the symptom of the underlying desire certain industries have for cheap workers who can’t complain about working conditions. Those politicians are responding to that demand, not just acting in a vacuum. That’s why it’s almost unheard of for employers to suffer penalties and why you see this cycle in states like Texas where people talk tough about immigrants but every time someone suggests employers be required to use e-verify the Republican leadership kills the bill due to the impact on construction and agriculture:

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/05/texas-e-verify-requi...

rayiner · 21h ago
Yes, the traditional GOP sold out America. That's why George P. Bush couldn't get elected dog catcher in Texas anymore.
TimorousBestie · 21h ago
> Where are the goalposts? Are you suggesting that some people found to be working illegally shouldn’t be deported?

H1-B reform should be table stakes and simple for this administration to tackle, since they “don’t give a shit” (a direct quote from VPOTUS) about laws and the legislative process.

If the administration actually cared about making it easier for foreign companies to invest in domestic production capacity, they could accomplish it overnight.

cmxch · 14h ago
Remove the entire program root and stem by repealing the 1965 Immigration Act and all its provisions. Then create a system that makes it unprofitable to body shop out US citizens and compensates those that have been.
ajross · 21h ago
> Where are the goalposts?

Absent other argument, I'd say "where they've been since the 50's" is a good prior to take, no?

To counter-quip: what is the goal? I genuinely don't have any idea in this circumstance how the reactionary right wing adherence to ideology does anything but harm the country they claim they're trying to improve.

I mean, do you want Hyundai to build factories in the US? Everyone seems to claim so. Yet here is a Hyundai factory that seems likely to be shuttered or delayed for years because of... ideology?

rayiner · 21h ago
> Absent other argument, I'd say "where they've been since the 50's" is a good prior to take, no?

Please listen to the NYT podcast I linked. In 1950, immigration had been severely restricted for three decades, dropping the foreign-born population from 14.7% in 1910 to 5.4% in 1960. Then, Congress enacted Hart-Celler in 1965, but promised that it would not increase immigration. According to Gallup, public support for increasing immigration has never exceeded 34% since that time, and from 1965 to 2000, was under 10%. But in that timeframe, the foreign-born population has grown from a low of 4.7% in 1970 to 15.6% in 2024--higher than it ever was in the 20th century.

So no, continuing to ignore the immigration laws Americans voted for and have consistently supported is not a good prior.

acdha · 21h ago
> the foreign-born population has grown from a low of 4.7% in 1970 to 15.6% in 2024--higher than it ever was in the 20th century.

This is going to be exaggerated by the decline in the domestic birth rate over that same period. It’s widely recognized that the U.S. has avoided the aging population effect seen throughout the advanced economies solely due to allowing more working-age immigrants.

jacquesm · 18h ago
And that's a good thing. Who else is going to staff those nursing home full of debilitated nonagenarians?
rayiner · 17h ago
I care very little about nursing homes. I care a lot more about the deep culture (https://opengecko.com/geckoview/interculturalism/visualising...) of future citizens and voters.
ericfr11 · 15h ago
The culture of the future will be built by the people of the present. If not, then, America should go back to being great again with the Apache and the Navajo leading the country!
rayiner · 14h ago
> The culture of the future will be built by the people of the present

That’s the problem! I am unpersuaded that the people of the present could recreate the America at which Alexander de Tocqueville marveled: http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/LojkoMiklos/Alexis-de-To....

American democracy is highly unusual in the world. Indians, for example, have figured out mass voting—within a society where people see government as a parental figure—but they don’t have anything resembling the bottom-up participatory democracy of something like the Iowa Caucuses.

I think it’s inevitable (and baked in) that democracy in America will degrade to what it is in most third world countries: masses of low information citizens with little sense of ownership and participation voting for daddy government to care for them.

jacquesm · 13h ago
> American democracy is highly unusual in the world.

Indeed it is. That's not necessarily a bad thing. There are other countries that show much better what democracy could look like than what the USA is going through.

> Indians, for example, have figured out mass voting—within a society where people see government as a parental figure—but they don’t have anything resembling the bottom-up participatory democracy of something like the Iowa Caucuses.

Nor do they have gerrymandering. But such singular characteristics are not defining either. Both India, the USA and in fact much of the planet have issues in terms of government, participation and representation. It is however pretty rare to see a nominal democracy turn into an autocracy overnight. Rarer still that this is being cheered on by those that stand the least to gain from the change.

> I think it’s inevitable (and baked in) that democracy in America will degrade to what it is in most third world countries: masses of low information citizens with little sense of ownership and participation voting for daddy government to care for them.

That is one possible outcome. There are many others and quite a few of them a lot worse than that. Currently, based on how things are going we are not on a worldline (to use a popular term) where the outcome that you sketch is inevitable at all.

rayiner · 9h ago
> But such singular characteristics are not defining either. Both India, the USA and in fact much of the planet have issues in terms of government, participation and representation.

The Iowa Caucuses exemplifies the most important distinguishing characteristic of American democracy. India is a hierarchical society, where low-information masses select who will parent them. America, by contrast, is an egalitarian democracy. That doesn't mean maximizing the participation of the low-information masses. It means that Americans choose from amongst themselves people to represent them within a system of self-government. Americans have this ideal of self-government all the way down, from the President down to elected school boards and HOAs and church leadership.

> There are other countries that show much better what democracy could look like than what the USA is going through.

I'll grant you one thing: American democracy is worse than it was when Reagan was running against Carter, and Trump is part of the reason for that. But the way in which it's worse is that it more resembles Indian third-world slop democracy!

jacquesm · 16h ago
> I care very little about nursing homes.

ok.

> I care a lot more about the deep culture of future citizens and voters.

Yes. The native Americans had some ideas about that too. I find it supremely hypocritical of you, child of immigrants, to start telling a good chunk of the country that you immigrated into (regardless of how they got there) that 'their culture' is not welcome.

> https://opengecko.com/geckoview/interculturalism/visualising...

Did you even read that link or any of the associated texts? It seems to argue strongly against the thing you care about in isolation. It is all about interaction.

And of course culture is more than just the surface. That's what makes it so beautiful. It is a whole interlocking complex of concepts and various cultures interacting and learning/borrowing/stealing bits of culture from each other is how we progress. If not for that you would not be where you are today, and I would be speaking Latin.

Immigrants (illegal and otherwise) are not just a part of the United States, they are the United States.

rayiner · 12h ago
I linked that page because the iceberg metaphor is extremely useful. The rest of the page is feeler slop. It recognizes that cultural differences are substantive (e.g. concepts of fairness) and not only superficial (e.g. food). But it takes it as axiomatic that mixing those differences necessarily is a good thing.

Of course we don't have to take it on faith that mixing cultures is a good thing, we can look at actual results. For example, more than 200 years after they immigrated to the U.S. in large numbers, Dutch Americans are still more successful and orderly along many dimensions even compared to neighboring German Americans. For example, Dutch Americans, along with Mormons, were the two groups of Republicans to vote strongly against Trump in the 2016 primary: https://michaeljdouma.com/2019/05/19/dutch-americans-in-alie....

If you don't care about superficial elements of culture (food, movies), cultural influence from immigrants has made almost no positive impact on American culture. The most functional and orderly communities in the country in 1725 were New England Purtians, and the places populated by their descendants remain so in 2025.

jacquesm · 11h ago
> I linked that page because the iceberg metaphor is extremely useful.

Indeed it is. But remarkably, it serves mostly to show why what you are writing is simply not true.

> The rest of the page is feeler slop.

You mean the bits you didn't bother to read before you linked the page? Or just the bits that you don't like?

> It recognizes that cultural differences are substantive (e.g. concepts of fairness) and not only superficial (e.g. food).

And this is news how?

> But it takes it as axiomatic that mixing those differences necessarily is a good thing.

Which indeed it is.

> Of course we don't have to take it on faith that mixing cultures is a good thing, we can look at actual results. For example, more than 200 years after they immigrated to the U.S. in large numbers, Dutch Americans are still more successful and orderly along many dimensions even compared to neighboring German Americans.

This is absolutely hilarious. Dutch Americans went to America not because they were so orderly or successful, they went there because there either was money to be made or because they were - case in point - deported. The same for many English and Irish people that made it to the early USA. My very high flying and orderly lawyer decided to figure out his ancestry and ended up at some criminal that had picked the boat instead of the gallows.

> For example, Dutch Americans, along with Mormons, were the two groups of Republicans to vote strongly against Trump in the 2016 primary: https://michaeljdouma.com/2019/05/19/dutch-americans-in-alie....

That's by a guy whose ancestors came from Friesland, arguably the most nationalistic of all of NL, but along the lines of how Catalans or Basques see their position in Spain. They cling to their history due to endless suppression of the Frisians by the Dutch (at the time, North Holland and South Holland), not unlike what the UK did to the Irish but a bit less brutal (usually, anyway). But fine, let's look at what he wrote instead of at who he is and what his ancestorship is.

He mostly argues that the Dutch have managed to set themselves apart from other groups of immigrants by staying true to their roots, but also that they have since assimilated and that those communities are now more mixed.

I know a bunch of people like that. Family members that emigrated long ago, you may have heard of them, they're amongst the wealthiest in the United States. They are no longer connected to the Netherlands in any practical way, the only thing that still links them is their last name, and a vague recollection that they had some Dutch ancestry. Their story is fairly unique, but there are many stories that are much more mundane without such insane commercial success. If not for their last names you wouldn't be able to tell their ancestry at all.

And sure, rural towns that were populated or founded by immigrants from one group tend to keep some of their roots alive, possibly as some kind of time capsule. Just like the Dutch Afrikaners, to name one weird offshoot of Dutch colonialism. Nothing to be proud of, that's for sure.

Meanwhile, the cities are the melting pots, and that's where far more people live of all kinds of ancestry than in the rural country side. That's also where the fear of the other tends to be a lot lower, simply because there are more others and it is much easier to live together because it is normalized. I employed the only non-white guy on an Island in Canada and I've seen up close how those former Dutch (and German) ancestors dealt with the opportunity to get up close and personal with other cultures. Hint: not very well. So spare me the great advantages of those orderly people who once upon a time came across the Atlantic to colonize the new land. They are no different than anybody else, and with a little luck their little islands are as racist as they come.

> If you don't care about superficial elements of culture (food, movies), cultural influence from immigrants has made almost no positive impact on American culture.

What???

> The most functional and orderly communities in the country in 1725 were New England Purtians [sic], and the places populated by their descendants remain so in 2025.

Yes, who would have thought that having a massive head start in money and education would lead to a lasting advantage over time? Where do you think the term 'old money' comes from? Immigrants as a rule, especially undocumented ones are not going to be hobnobbing with the wealthy New England old money descendants to pick up the finer points of dining table behavior or how to function in a social climate different than the one they came from. There are some exceptions but let's not kid each other here. But there is a very good chance that the UBO of their presence in the USA is exactly that group of descendants of those New England Puritans, and not the immigrants. And that allows you in turn to point at them as failures, rather than as the exploited.

Really man, you've just been schooled in a basic principle of law, your stated profession by a foreigner. That's roughly in line with you having to explain to me what RMS power stands for or how to set up a for loop in C.

You then deflect to a bunch of utter tripe about the country that I'm from, on which you have projected a whole bunch of your own feelings which are completely disconnected from reality on the ground. Now you're pulling in the end result of a couple of hundred years of head start by the first wave of immigrants as a proof point that other cultures are at best a neutral or very slightly positive contribution, if not the source of many negatives.

Maybe take a breather and think this over, you are not exactly anonymous on here and you have a real world reputation to consider.

rayiner · 9h ago
> So spare me the great advantages of those orderly people who once upon a time came across the Atlantic to colonize the new land. They are no different than anybody else, and with a little luck their little islands are as racist as they come.

The Dutch built multiple advanced societies on three different continents (their homeland, the Americas, and South Africa) whilst Bangladeshis have not succeeded in building any. I care a lot more about how they did that--and not breaking whatever cultural magic is responsible--than about how nice they are to foreigners.

You seem to take Dutch (or American) culture for granted. I think of it as a fragile local optimum and that we should be terrified that immigration will cause regression to the global cultural mean.

> Yes, who would have thought that having a massive head start in money and education would lead to a lasting advantage over time? Where do you think the term 'old money' comes from?

The head start doesn't count for much. If it did, Mexico would be richer than Massachusetts. Utah was populated by Mormons fleeing religious persecution more than 200 years after the founding of the Massachusetts Bay colony, but its median income is only 6% behind.

Regardless, it's not a money thing. Italian Americans, for example, overtook English Americans in income long ago. New Jersey has a similar median income to Massachusetts. But Massachusetts is a far better state than New Jersey on most social metrics.

> But there is a very good chance that the UBO of their presence in the USA is exactly that group of descendants of those New England Puritans, and not the immigrants. And that allows you in turn to point at them as failures, rather than as the exploited.

This is a third-world way of thinking. Societies get rich by creating the social and legal conditions that allow building things and running businesses, not by exploiting people. That's why culture matters so much for prosperity.

jacquesm · 3h ago
The main reason why the Dutch do what they do is because:

- it takes less than 2 hours by car in any direction to be abroad where they speak a different language

- NL has been overrun historically by (not in any particular order) the Romans, the French, the Spanish, the Germans and has been in long and complicated wars with all of these, and in many cases more than once.

- In spite of being tiny what you know as 'the Dutch' is internally extremely fragmented, there are at least 10 different cultures, this isn't so much a country as it is a bunch of mini countries in a trenchcoat, with the dividing lines not being so much geographical as cultural.

- Trade. You can't really do much here other than think and grow potatoes and beets. Other than some natural gas in the North we have no natural resources worth mentioning, though at some point we had some coal mining in the Southernmost area. So trade it is and in the past trade meant shipbuilding.

- Theft. Slavery. Colonies. Exploitation. NL absolutely excelled at all of those at some point in the past.

Bangladeshi's not being able to emulate the Dutch in that sense should not come as a surprise: we were small but absolutely ruthless in war and in trade at a time when the cards in the world were being shuffled. We did not suffer from the resource curse and very early realized that religion is a personal thing and so limited the amount of influence that the various religions had here. And finally, science was adopted wholesale because it was good for business.

Those factors, as well as a culture steeped in work just to keep the country in existence (without all that work it would simply disappear and become a river delta again) are where the main differences with a place like Bangladesh lie, and I don't doubt that the potential for doing this is present in many places that are not doing well today.

At the same time: the current generation of Dutch people are losing sight of all of this, they take it all for granted and it's theirs to lose.

Abroad in those colonies the Dutch have been horrendous and the amount of wealth plundered (from places like Bangladesh) is off the scale, the only countries that can compete are England, Portugal and Spain, and Belgium to some degree as well and that's not a pretty story either.

This is a small country that is fabulously wealthy that has been built on a lake of blood. And because the blood wasn't spilled here we can pretend that we are the good guys but make no mistake, we pretty much invented genocide and have committed war crimes that we are proud enough of that the perpetrators have major streets named after themselves. We more or less invented externalization.

So so much for 'Societies get rich by creating the social and legal conditions that allow building things and running businesses, not by exploiting people.'

This is not the country you want as an example for that statement.

ericfr11 · 15h ago
Which proves that immigration is a good thing
cmxch · 14h ago
…for everyone but the citizens it displaces.

You want people to believe it’s good? Cut huge checks from the companies that won’t hire citizens, to the citizens.

jacquesm · 2h ago
> …for everyone but the citizens it displaces.

That never happened. Except in the former USSR where whole areas were depopulated to be restocked with Russians.

> You want people to believe it’s good? Cut huge checks from the companies that won’t hire citizens, to the citizens.

Yes, that's called a social security system and it is being done in plenty of countries in the world.

rayiner · 14h ago
The orderliness of American and society has been in consistent decline since 1965. Our ability to organize and follow the law peaked around that time.
philwelch · 21h ago
This is one of many issues that people are disingenuous about. They just want open borders even if it means ignoring the law and the preferences of the American people.
SanjayMehta · 21h ago
It’s a language issue.

When I first started travelling to the US, I was carefully coached by US HR and Legal to say I was on “business” as in meetings, and not “work.”

I suspect the subtle difference was not understood by the Koreans.

A shoddy way and shortsighted to deal with companies which are investing in your country.

bitcurious · 21h ago
> I suspect the subtle difference was not understood by the Koreans.

Why would you suspect that a company flying in hundreds of laborers can’t afford a lawyer to give the same guidance your HR company gave? It’s tax evasion and cost cutting.

jacquesm · 19h ago
When I was much younger I was sent 'onsite' regularly to set up machinery that had been made by the company I worked for. This is still pretty common in anything related to industry because you're just simply not going to be able to train a local to troubleshoot/install a machine that they have no clue about. Some of this stuff takes years to become familiar with.
SanjayMehta · 21h ago
Experts setting up machines are not “labour.”

No comments yet

xadhominemx · 21h ago
It’s not a language issue - it’s because a quirk in US immigration law means South Koreans are not eligible for the E-2 visa, and are stuck competing for capped categories like the H-1B.

A group of house reps have been trying to fix this issue since 2012, but have never gotten it through committee.

gruez · 21h ago
>It’s a language issue.

>When I first started travelling to the US, I was carefully coached by US HR and Legal to say I was on “business” as in meetings, and not “work.”

Were you actually there for "meetings"? or actually doing stuff like writing reports?

Jach · 20h ago
At a former US job of mine, for a US headquartered company, I (a US citizen) was told similarly for my trips to Canada. I don't think it was by HR or legal though, it was either an older team member or one of the managers. But they reiterated that when I would occasionally travel to our Canadian office where half my team was, I should say I was there for meetings and I was not managing anyone. (I don't know what our team's manager said if they asked on the latter bit.) The primary purpose was of course meetings (and meeting artifacts), and it was never longer than a week, though my layman understanding would still call that "work", and in any case I'd have my work-issued general purpose computer with me. But this phrasing is all just to get past border control with minimum fuss and just my passport (card). I highly doubt in this particular post's case the problem is a "language issue".

On a conference trip to Italy, they basically asked me nothing. "Where are you going? Ok, next." Hardly any security either. You even had to walk through a gift shop to get to the customs area. It was nice.

__turbobrew__ · 21h ago
Almost everyone I know who goes to the USA for “business meetings” on a b-1 actually works while in the US whether it be coding, report writing, consulting for money, professional services, etc…
SanjayMehta · 21h ago
That’s for me to know and you to wonder.

Trust me, no one in my role thought travelling once a quarter through EWR was a privilege. Haven’t had to visit for ten years and will never have to again, thank goodness.