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Protesters gathered successful South Korea’s Incheon International Airport portion hundreds of deported workers arrived. | Image: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images
President Donald Trump is trying to creaseless things implicit with South Korea aft his medication arrested hundreds of workers astatine a Hyundai works successful Georgia earlier this month. Just hours aft reports indicated that South Korea would unfastened a quality rights probe into the detention of Korean employees, Trump said helium doesn’t “want to frighten off” overseas concern into the US — thing helium has made a precedence during his 2nd administration.
On September 4th, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descended connected the electrical conveyance artillery works operated by Hyundai and LG Energy Solutions, detaining astir 500 workers, including astir 300 workers from South Korea. ICE officials claimed the workers overstayed their visas oregon weren’t permitted to enactment successful the US, according to NBC News.
Workers interviewed by The Korea Times accidental they were “shackled and handcuffed” and past brought to the ICE detention halfway successful Folkston, Georgia, portion their belongings and phones were confiscated. It’s not wide whether the workers were adjacent eligible for deportation, as The New York Times reported connected Friday that “in astatine slightest 1 instance, officials admitted a idiosyncratic was employed legally and forced him to permission the state anyway.”
As noted by the Times, galore of the workers entered the US connected a B1 visa for concern travel, allowing them to enactment successful the US for little than six months, oregon connected a visa waiver program, permitting them to enactment for up to 90 days. Some companies usage short-term visas alternatively of H-1B visas, which let overseas workers to enactment successful the US for up to six years, due to the fact that they’re cheaper, faster to obtain, and little restrictive. “Previous US administrations had mostly turned a unsighted oculus to the practice,” according to The Guardian.
Trump has called connected overseas companies to put much wealth into the US to debar paying costly tariffs. Hyundai responded with the announcement successful March that it would walk $21 cardinal successful the US from 2025 to 2028, with plans to grow car accumulation successful the US to 1.2 cardinal vehicles each twelvemonth and amended its facilities. The removal of hundreds of workers could hold these plans, arsenic Hyundai has already pushed backmost the opening of its Georgia factory.
The raid sparked outrage from South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who called the move “extremely bewildering” and said companies successful the state volition beryllium “very hesitant” astir pouring much wealth into the US. South Korea’s information advisor Wi Sung-Lac added that the authorities would work with the US to carve retired clearer guidelines for visa requirements, arsenic good arsenic perchance make a caller class for Korean workers, according to Reuters.
The incidental puts the Trump medication connected shaky crushed with South Korea, which has agelong remained an state of the US. In a station connected Truth Social, President Trump wrote that helium would similar to bring overseas workers to the US to “teach and train” employees based successful the US. “We invited them, we invited their employees, and we are consenting to proudly accidental we volition larn from them, and bash adjacent amended than them astatine their ain ‘game,’ sometime into the not excessively distant future!”
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