When news broke late last week that hundreds of workers were detained for immigration violations at the construction site for a large battery plant in Georgia, I quickly posted it to The Morning Dump and moved on to other stories. Not because it wasn’t important, but because I sensed that it would take a few days to have a better sense of what really happened.
The smoke has cleared a bit, and what’s left is an indictment of industrial, educational, and environmental policy at almost every level. It was a goal of the founders that greatness should emerge from the tension between various levels and branches of government and, sometimes, that happens. Lately, it’s felt more like all that exists is the tension, with very little of the greatness.
The old saying was that politics should “stop at the water’s edge,” which is to say that American politicians should present a united front when facing the world. That’s out the window, and now Volkswagen is essentially negotiating with the government to secure a better deal on tariffs in exchange for more investment. I have uneasy feelings about this, but it’s the rational way to respond to the current environment, a lesson that the outgoing Japanese PM has learned the hard way.
Is there a new Škoda? There is a new Śkoda, so of course I’m going to write about it to round out the day.
It’s Just Policy Failures All The Way Down
I am going to attempt to make the conversation around the Hyundai immigration raid a political discussion without it being a partisan one. This is partially because the policy failures inherent in this are not unique to any one party, and partially because you can imprint whatever (mainstream) political belief you have on what happened without being entirely wrong (or entirely right).
If you missed it, the Department of Homeland Security undertook what they describe as the largest single-site operation in the Department’s history when it raided the joint LG/Hyundai battery plant under construction in Georgia. This is a multi-billion-dollar project designed to provide batteries for the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America (HMGMA).
Reports vary, but the best I can tell, roughly 475 individuals were detained (but thus far not all charged) for immigration violations. I am used to these stories, which typically involve individuals from Central or South America. I think the fact that most of the workers detained were South Korean has surprised people.
Here’s how the Atlanta News First news agency describes it:
Authorities said most of the workers detained were Korean nationals who either entered the U.S. illegally or overstayed their visas. Many were employed by subcontractors tied to the $7.6 billion project. Hyundai’s electric vehicle plant in Ellabell remains in operation, while LG Energy Solution paused construction to assist investigators.
There’s a lot to unpack here, and it exposes the fundamental contradictions at work in American politics.
The existence of this plant has a lot to do with an expected shift towards electrification and, specifically, a desire by the previous administration to support EVs. While the demand side was being stoked by the Inflation Reduction Act’s battery tax credit (which also included provisions that encouraged American-sourced batteries), the supply side was being encouraged by what’s called Section 45X, which provides a $35 credit per kWh of capacity, and a module credit of $10 per kWh. While hardliners in the Republican Party attempted to kill all of these credits, the distribution of these facilities meant the law was largely creating jobs in Republican-voting areas, so 45X was modified but spared (at least for battery production, wind/solar is another story).
So 45X still exists, and Georgia’s Republican Governor, Brian Kemp, has been very supportive and encouraging of these projects. Georgia stands to probably gain the most by this push towards electrification, as various plants from Hyundai and Rivian could bring a lot of jobs. It’s possible to believe in electric cars and, at the same time, oppose the IRA consumer tax credit. I think it’s a little harder to want EVs and oppose 45X.
And this gets us a little closer to the uncomfortable reality of the situation. America largely invented the underlying technology that makes electric batteries possible, but a lack of investment has made it so that the country requires expertise from Chinese (CATL), Japanese (Panasonic), or Korean firms (SK On and LGES). If America wants to get good at building these things, it’ll have to at least partially match the investments made to develop this industry in other places, and 45X specifically does that.
President Trump himself has basically made the spending of South Korean money in the United States a part of his economic policy, but this raid is already causing concern among South Korean businesses, according to The Korea Economic Daily:
Korean companies with US interests have frozen travel plans and recalled staff already in the US over fears of further raids.
“Korean workers are treated like criminals for building factories that Washington itself lobbied for,” said a company executive in Seoul. “If this continues, investment in the US could be reconsidered.”
The incident underscores a structural weakness in Korea Inc.’s overseas expansion model.
With H-1B and L-1 work visas, which are harder to obtain, in short supply, Korean firms have routinely rotated engineers through 90-day ESTA entries or short-term B-1 visas to meet tight construction schedules.
Industry officials in Seoul warn that unless visa arrangements for skilled Korean employees are settled through bilateral talks, investment timetables worth more than 140 trillion won ($101 billion) across multiple US states will face serious delays and cost overruns.
If you believe there’s a shortage of workers in this country entirely because of a lack of people with the correct skills and education, then this is clear proof. Someone who might sort of agree with you is President Trump himself, who told reporters as much this weekend:
“You don’t have people in this country who know about batteries,” Trump told reporters Sunday as he returned to Washington from watching the US Open tennis final. “Maybe we should help them along and let some people come in and train our people.”
[…]
“We do have to work something out where we bring in experts so our people can be trained, so they can do it themselves,” Trump said.
This is a contradiction within the Trump Administration itself, with some trying to restrict basically all immigration to the United States (the same group trying to up the number of immigration raids), and others trying to make it easier to attract skilled foreign workers and foreign investment.
Are foreign workers only being used because they have more skills in building battery plants? Is this just because of issues with the Trump Administration? Absolutely not. This specific plant had issues with safety and the use of immigrant labor that go back to the Biden years, as reported by local affiliate WTOC:
Darwin Bonilla, a worker’s rights advocate, provides aid to immigrant workers, and came to Bryan County after he says he heard too many reports to ignore. He helped Rincon get in touch with legal help.
This one plant is just a microcosm for all of the unresolved contradictions at the heart of American politics right now. Hyundai, for its part, is putting some of this on its subcontractors:
Hyundai Motor Company is aware of the immigration enforcement action that took place at the construction site of its supplier, the HL-GA Battery Company in Bryan County, Georgia. We are closely monitoring the situation while working to understand the specific circumstances. Based on our current understanding, none of those detained is directly employed by Hyundai Motor Company.
Hyundai is committed to full compliance with all laws and regulations in every market where we operate. This includes employment verification requirements and immigration laws. We expect the same commitment from all our partners, suppliers, contractors, and subcontractors.
The safety and well-being of everyone working at our sites, whether directly employed by us or working for our suppliers, is a top priority. We take our responsibility as a corporate citizen seriously, and incidents like this remind us of the importance of robust oversight throughout our entire supply chain and contractor network.
So far, I would grade Hyundai’s oversight as poor.
Audi Might Build In America If It Gets What It Wants
Dovetailing nicely with the above story, Volkswagen is currently figuring out how much it wants to use the carrot of investment to reduce the stick of tariffs. This is particularly important for the company as its brands use plants in Mexico to keep costs down, and those facilities are facing higher tariffs.
In a long interview with Automotive News, Audi CEO Gernot Döllner lays out what’s going on fairly clearly:
Audi is reportedly going to build cars in the U.S. Will they be made at VW’s factory in Tennessee, the new Scout plant in South Carolina, at a new plant somewhere in the country, or at all three?
The decision hasn’t been taken yet. The discussion around production is led by VW Group. We first need stability regarding tariffs and other U.S. regulations. Once we have that, we will decide whether Audi will get its own U.S. factory. In addition, we will decide whether Audi models could be produced at those other two factories.
Chief Executive Oliver Blume said the tariffs, currently set at 27.5%, have cost the company several billion euros so far this year, primarily impacting its Audi and Porsche brands that lack U.S. production facilities. Speaking at the IAA Munich car show, Blume called the current trade arrangement between Brussels and Washington “asymmetric,” noting that European auto imports face heavy duties while U.S. industrial goods enter Europe tariff-free.
Consequently, VW is depending on its investment strategy in the U.S., as Blume added that talks with the U.S. government have been “very positive.” He also indicated that Volkswagen is exploring the possibility of building a facility for its Audi brand and improving its supply chain and labor force in the United States.
I suppose this is quid pro quo, but isn’t it always?
Japan Is Getting A New PM, Eventually
It’s egocentric to think every other country makes its decisions based on what happens in the United States, but the chaos of tariffs certainly didn’t help the current Japanese PM Shigeru Ishiba, who is reportedly going to step down. Who will replace him? From Nikkei Asia, there are two obvious frontrunners:
Two possible candidates are Agriculture Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, son of former Japanese leader Junichiro Koizumi, and Sanae Takaichi, a former economic security minister who could become Japan’s first female prime minister.
Both were strong contenders for the LDP presidency in 2024 but lost to Ishiba.
Whoever succeeds Ishiba as prime minister will need to find ways to work with opposition parties as the leader of a minority government.
The LDP doesn’t have enough seats in parliament to just appoint whomever it wants, so the pick will also have to win support from minority parties.
The Škoda Epiq Is Cool
If Volkswagen is good at anything, it’s using a platform to support as many different vehicles as possible. This was once derided as badge-engineering, but it works for VW, and basically everyone does it now. This weekend, VW showed the ID. Cross Concept we should get, and now Skoda has shown off the Epiq, which is a small EV crossover we’re definitely not going to get:
Klaus Zellmer, CEO of Škoda Auto, said: “The Epiq show car offers a concrete glimpse into the next addition to Škoda’s successful all-electric family. It embodies the essence of Škoda: modern solid design, a spacious interior within a compact footprint, user-friendly, intuitive digital interfaces, and Simply Clever details that ensure a seamless experience— and above all—at an attractive price point. With the Epiq, we’re taking another step towards making electric cars a practical and compelling choice for everyday drivers. “
Dare to dream with me.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Let’s go back to “I Need You Tonight” from INXS.
The Big Question
Blughherhhawher, what do you think about all of this?
Top photo: Hyundai
None of the Koreans were here illegally. They all had valid visas. Supposedly, some racist Caren type bitch called ICE on them. In 2029, she should be charged with creating a false public alarm/filing a false report and obstruction of justice or something.
The Koreans were there to TRAIN Americans how to do the jobs.
Hyundai should just stop investing there and instead build a new facility in Canada.
It was a Georgia representative. You can’t miss her, she’s got 10 lbs on makeup on her. She has the Faux News blonde anchor look.
You could say she has a “bleach-blond, butch-body” look about her. Or so I heard from a Texas representative I respect GREATLY.
I’ll leave politics out of this, but I think the signs are pretty clear we are in the early stages of an unavoidable geopolitical AI arms race. To have a fighting chance of winning that war, we need to be massively building out our energy infrastructure…All of it… natural gas, solar, wind, nuclear, fusion, H2, batteries…. To do that, we need to get our arms around the idea that we need to build things and we need to build things fast. Doing so might require a lot of help from anyone we can get to help. China doesn’t have any problems building what it needs and they have a huge advantage in pulling off colossal projects.
…by unavoidable I mean that we’re already too deep in the gravity well to change course, not that we shouldn’t have avoided it.
In its current form, AI is a bubble and a bit of a Ponzi scheme. It shouldn’t be the basis of policy.
There is a massive infrastructure deficit, but that’s not the reason to work on it.
I agree that AI is overhyped, but if it looks like we’re pouring resources into it (especially miliary aspects), then China will do the same, then we will do the same again, etc… so it doesn’t even matter if it’s any good or useful to create its own feedback loop.
The sunk cost fallacy is not something on which we should base policy and investment.
I hope I am not on the timeline where AI is this important. Can I jump to another metaverse?
My experiences with current AI are mixed to say the least – if you need a picture edited/created it can be awesome (although there can be lots of prompt engineering to get something close to what I want and it is usually not readily editable), certain sub-sets of text it does ok. But in general I don’t see the world-changing applications. I use ML for some kinds of analyses, but this is not what people generally think about when they discuss “AI.”
Honestly I’m hoping the same thing, but once you start looking at all the news headlines through the lens of an AI arms race, it’s hard to un-see the connections and second order consequences.
I’m no Trump apologist – I think his administration is rapidly destroying what we have left of democracy in this country and that he’s setting himself up for a Papa Doc Duvalier type dictatorship with Baby Doc Trump already in the wings – but I can’t be mad at them for this raid. Hyundai is being incentivized handsomely for building this plant and they’re trying to milk as much profit out of it as possible by bringing in low-paid workers and ignoring the attendant visa requirements. I can believe there aren’t many qualified workers in Georgia for them to hire, but this is a big country and there’s no evidence that they tried to hire US workers for these position (although I’d love to be proven wrong about that). These sorts of shenanigans would never be tolerated in South Korea or China or in most European countries or in Canada, for that matter, and they shouldn’t be allowed to happen here, either. Hyundai is trying to conveniently hide their actions behind the irrelevant excuse of “Hey, you guys wanted us to build this plant!” Yes, but we also wanted you to obey the law.
Was it a grandstanding low-hanging fruit raid by ICE? Sure it was, but they weren’t wrong to do it.
The Koreans were there to TRAIN the Americans.
Understood, but that doesn’t give them the right to ignore the visa requirements (if their visas were actually expired). Unfortunately, I didn’t see any definitive evidence that they were or weren’t, but many of the comments that were reported made it seem as if their visas were expired. If they were here legally, then my previous comments were off-base (except for the ones about the Trump administration).
I would guess they came over here on a four month visa for a three month project that took a year to complete.
It literally happens all the time. It is a paperwork problem that can be resolved without armed raiders whisking people off to undisclosed detention sites.
They could have talked to Hyundai directly once evidence was collected and negotiated a settlement that included a fine, instead of creating an international incident that is making other Korean companies rethink investing in America.
That would have been more rational, sure, but nobody has ever accused this administration of being rational.
With the size of the budget they are trying to spend, loading up the armored trucks at every opportunity probably seems rational
CNN Expose: Trump admin colluding with mega corp to evade immigration law!
I think we’d all love it if govt worked using common sense like that but the reality is we don’t actually allow that to happen.
Would not let the people stay on expired visas, but letting them self deport is cheaper than using helicopters to arrest them.
We do it all the time (or used to).
Give them a few days to get their affairs in order and then let them leave on their own and not return for a certain period of time as a penalty.
What makes you think these were low paid workers? Everything I have seen suggests they were mostly highly paid workers brought here because they were familiar with production techniques being employed. And that they would have returned to Korea once the plant was up and running successfully.
Good point, but I bet they were lower paid than a corresponding US citizen would have been. I admit that was conjecture on my part.
As mentioned repeatedly, they were brought in to train employees. There were no corresponding US citizens – because they are still being trained – and once the training is done the South Korean engineers are going home.
That might be true, but it is also conjecture on your part, since I see nothing in the report that substantiates that.
I mean, it’s also conjecture that everyone was on an illegal visa and cheaper hires than any US citizen. It’s also highly illogical – the cost of sending Korean employees to the US for a couple months would be fairly expensive, and it’s ridiculous to assume that a factory owned and (potentially, if this doesn’t torpedo the investment) operated by a Korea companies is only bringing over Korean staff because they’re cheap.
Nothing in the reporting I have seen substantiates your conjecture either.
But Occam’s Razor says that the simplest explanation is there was nowhere near enough talent available in the US to build the facility, so it had to be imported.
Your guess is, indeed, as good as mine. But I disagree about Occam’s razor. Knowing that the prime motivation for corporations is profit led me to assume that they were doing what they did from a profit motive, which sends the simplest explanation to me.
They also very much do things because they have to, even when it costs MORE. Because NOT getting the project done is not profitable.
Why would Hyundai bring in unskilled labor from Korea, when the entire point of locating in Georgia is the available pool of cheap labor?
That’s like importing sand from Korea to bring to the beach.
Unlikely – South Korea has very high labor costs – including trades and engineering. In some cases more expensive than the U.S. Their autoworker unions are very strong.
Considering the American equivalents work for an American auto maker, I wouldn’t assume the Koreans were paid less.
Exactly! The whole point of locating auto plants in the south is the much, much, much cheaper non-union autoworker labor pool there. But that is unskilled labor – and that is not what these people were. If they could have hired locally, they would have. I guarantee those Koreans were making bank working here, and very likely all expenses paid at that. No different than Americans who end up working for US companies in other countries make serious money as a rule. But they got lazy and skipped the paperwork (likely because it’s ridiculous in the US).
At this point working in the US probably qualifies you for hazard pay.
How many people had actual immigration charges filed against them? I’m looking for an answer and can’t find it anywhere.
Last report I saw mentioned four (4) cited.
How do you know these Koreans were low-paid? I would assume they were paid rather well to come over here and do this work, whatever it was. Not like they snuck across the border in the dead of night.
Good point, but I bet they were lower paid than a corresponding US citizen would have been. I admit that was conjecture on my part.
I doubt it. Chances are there aren’t any corresponding US citizens in that industry.
Since much of this technology was invented in the US, and since there are US companies building battery plants here and abroad, I find that very hard to believe. And yes, some of these companies are based in the US, although many of the efforts are partnerships with companies from other nations.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/06/tracking-the-ev-battery-factory-construction-boom-across-north-america/
And those US companies probably already employ every American qualified to do the work. Nobody ships skilled workers across the planet unless they have to. These aren’t migrants picking lettuce.
Battery tech in Korea and to a lesser extent China is ahead of the US, at least in terms of production at scale.
Regarding your statement about Canada: https://www.hrreporter.com/focus-areas/recruitment-and-staffing/unions-criticize-plans-to-bring-900-korean-workers-for-ontario-ev-battery-plant/381734
I didn’t say Canada wouldn’t allow Korean workers. I said they wouldn’t allow foreign workers to ignore visa requirements.
Passst, hey, ICE. Check out Tyson foods, they got plants all over the country doing terrible things to chickens. About 80% of the people working on those plants do not have the proper paperwork. They’re stealing low paying, future less jobs from non-hard working Americans! Do something!
Also, every meat packing and food processing plant in the country. Bring several dozen busses, you’re going to need them.
Of course, chicken might get expensive…
Oh, all food `is going to get a lot more expensive if they keep this bullshit up. Which I personally am OK with if a whole bunch of people get better lives out of it. But I can afford to be that altruistic as a single dude who makes real money with no dependents other than a spoiled cat.
The cat deserves it.
And of course the direction explicitly says to stay out of the executive suite so as to not arrest anyone actually hiring these “illegals”, for that would be a step too far. And they are likely not people of color.
Arrest a couple of CEOs employing the “illegals”, stick them in one of the new concentration camps for a few months until due process takes its course and the alleged “problem” dries up overnight. In the meantime, I’m still not seeing the line of white men and women lining up for all of the available jobs picking strawberries, cleaning slaughterhouses, pouring concrete, or cleaning my hotel room. I do see my fruit and meat prices going up, concrete is through the roof, and my house cleaner is charging more (because she can).
But arresting the owners would be arresting the folks who are doing illegal things and making gobs of money doing it! Those are friends of the regime, not the enemies of ‘merica! We can’t be prosecuting white-collar crime!!! It’s right there in the name “white”! They can’t be doing anything really illegal, they’re white. C’mon man, get with the regime!!! /s
Oh no! Who will think of their children! 🙂 Thoughts and prayers all around!
Breaking news: Head of the Korean American Service and Education Consortium in New York, Kim Gap-song, who dispatched staff to Savannah to provide interpretation and other support for the detained HL-GA workers, said, “This raid has caused major disruptions to new factory construction across Georgia. I understand some Korean companies have decided to preemptively suspend construction in case of further incidents.”
And so it is:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/south-korean-companies-halt-georgia-investments-after-ice-raid/ar-AA1M7HCV
HELL YEAH baby! Gotta OWN THE LIBS even if it means crushing your own economic opportunities
GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m always amazed when big companies get raided for this kind of thing. Every job I’ve had in recent memory required jumping through a bunch of hoops for the I-9 paperwork to prove I’m eligible for employment so somehow these orgs must be getting around it. I’m guessing the contractor boundary works as a shield for that.
I work in healthcare so it’s not an apples to apples comp, but every job I apply for usually involves multiple background checks, at least one drug screening, a mountain of I-9 paperwork, 3 or 4 references, and multiple interviews.
I’ve also done a few stints in healthcare (IT) so I’ve been through similar. My last place even required a re-up for some childhood vaccinations after a blood test.
On the bright side, looks like you won’t have to worry about re-uping those vaccinations in the future. Especially if you go to work in Florida.
Of course I’m not sure I’d put my parents in an assisted living center without a fully vaccinated staff, or send my kids to a school without vaccinated students, or eat a a restaurant…, or go to a grocery store…
Yeah, maybe I’ll be skipping Florida for the foreseeable future. Man, I hope that doesn’t spread as much as the diseases themselves are about to.
For the record, I’m not upset I had to get that particular shot or that I was required to get other vaccines regularly to keep my job. I rarely got within miles of patients (sick people are gross lol) but I did support the blanket policy.
Just because the government of Florida is no longer mandating vaccines for children does not mean that a private employer can’t. Or can’t decline to hire you if you don’t, or just let you go (very much an at-will employment state). Stupids are not a protected class in the US (yet, anyway). I like to think the vast majority of parents are smart enough to have their kids vaccinated even without the mandate.
Personally, I think anyone who thinks vaccines are a scam should have to tour a few old graveyards and look at all the kid’s gravestones from the days before vaccines. My family has one that goes back 300+ years and it is HORRIFYING. Even if they DO cause autism (bullshit, that), I would rather have a kid who’s a little odd than one that is DEAD.
I’m just thankful that I have a medical condition that ensures that my insurance company will continue to pay for Covid shots for me, as I still fit into the latest “guidance” from the idiot Kennedy spawn. One in every family, I guess.
I’d avoid this whole damned country right now if I had a way to do it.
Problem is that if they change the mandates/recommendations, insurance doesn’t have to necessarily cover it. If people aren’t able to afford it out of pocket then demand drops and the vaccine manufacturers stop producing it. Then how do you get your kids vaccinated if the vaccines no longer exist? These are all things I get to know enjoy as a new parent in this hellish administration. Our pediatrician has already told us they don’t have the CV vaccine due to the new changes in recommendations and don’t have a timeline on getting it.
Insurance companies actually aren’t quite that stupid. They know that vaccinations are VASTLY cheaper than hospitalizations. Covid is an entirely different situation than *extremely* well-proven childhood vaccines that are absolutely fully authorized by the Feds – and despite Kennedy’s brain-worm fever dreams, that is not changing. And I have to wonder how many insurance companies actually will deny coverage for the Covid vaccine for the same reason. ONE hospitalization for Covid costs as much as many, many thousand shots…
And I have to think that a majority of parents don’t actually buy into these conspiracy theories anyway. it’s not like exceptions to the mandates are hard to get currently – in Florida, you pretty much just have to say “it’s against my religion” and you get a pass anyway (same as most conservative states). I think the whole thing is *cosmically* stupid, but at the same time I am not that worried about it. Some additional number of parents will not get their kids vaccinated, but I doubt it’s going to be a wholesale change. It’s just yet another way for DuhSantis and his pet medical goon to grab some headlines and throw red meat at his ever-shrinking base here in Florida. And at this point he’s not actually very popular anymore. People are not blind to what his bullshit has done to the economy here.
But to be clear – unless you are *medically* unable to get childhood shots, I think it absolutely 1000% should be mandated if you are going to attend public schools. And hopefully this anti-science conspiracy theory bullshit goes away at some point. Though sadly it will probably take a bunch of additional kids dying and going blind, and what have you to make it happen. Then again, kids dying seems to have no effect on gun laws in this country. Sigh.
It’s Medicaid, not private insurance that stands to gain (in the short term) by not providing vaccinations that many can’t afford out of pocket. And then down the road it equates to more billing of the government to take care of those non-immunized but that’ll be someone else’s problem.
It also plays into the private school donors, who can mandate what they want (vaccinations) and then reap a passel of new (healthy) kids that would otherwise go to public school with those that are feared to be (whether or not true) unvaccinated.
Shots are cheap, hospitalizations are not, and insurance companies, no matter who runs them, are not idiots when it comes to money. Again, do NOT conflate what is happening with the Covid vaccine and removing a mandate for childhood vaccinations in Florida – two very, very different things.
Friends now have to get prescriptions from a doctor (and incur costs for the visit) for covid booster shots. One more barrier.
The vast majority of parents won’t bother with getting a vaccine for their kids if there isn’t something to prompt them to do it. Especially if it isn’t covered by insurance – and it probably won’t be for people on the federal and state insurance programs.
A lot of kids (mostly on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale) are going to die because of this, if the recent Measles outbreaks are any sort of indicator.
Somewhat related, I used to believe the majority of voters weren’t stupid enough to vote a malignant narcissist into office a second time. Or that Senators weren’t stupid enough to confirm utterly incompetent people into the Cabinet and other critical governmental positions. But, here we are.
Time will tell, but having worked in the health insurance industry they are not stupid. Some parents won’t, I think most still will. Again – the Covid vaccine is a VERY different situation. It shouldn’t be, but that is the reality of it.
Only 1/3rd of voters voted for the lying sack of shit. The largest block didn’t bother to vote at all, sadly.
I agree the private insurers will (largely) still cover them. The public sector insurers, not so much. Can’t defy the edict from the top, and RFK doesn’t appear to believe in science. I think the worm ate too much of his brain.
For Covid vaccines, you are probably correct, because the Feds have changed the authorization of who should get the shots. But the Feds are not changing anything with childhood vaccines. Nothing will change there for insurance coverage. Florida’s vaccination mandate was barely a mandate to start with, and even DuhSantis is framing it as being about “parental choice”. I have no doubt the next governor and an actually qualified state surgeon general who isn’t a quack will change it back anyway.
Even Captain Brain Worm isn’t dumb enough to change the childhood vaccination authorizations. Even as he continues to do his best to sow doubt about them.
I worked with one of the last people in Canada to get polio. If you were an anti-vaxer you would not want to talk to him. He thought they were the absolute dumbest people on the face of the earth.
As do I. I just can’t even begin to understand how these idiots think. Oh wait, they don’t think, they “feel”. Or something.
I’m looking forward to GTA VI so I can play the inevitable ‘Assassinate Meatball Ron’ mission over and over again.
Same! I work in Healthcare IT and was asked to provide every vaccine/shot since birth. Multiple background checks and so many forms.
Switching to that industry as well. They took like four vials of blood to verify my immunity to things and I needed a couple of vaccines. Still have to go back for the second dose of two of them.
I am in the process of changing jobs right now and the process has been exhausting. I still have a full inbox of paperwork to fill out, including my I-9 which I won’t get to until Batch 2 of the new hire paperwork.
I haven’t started Batch 1 yet. Apparently the pile of stuff including health screening I’ve done to this point did not merit a batch number.
I work as a contractor in manufacturing and it’s this way for me. I guess other contractor companies are using loopholes to skirt legality.
Human Resources is not all that different from other parts of a large corporation. The executives at the top make unreasonable demands from their underlings, who eventually start cutting corners to meet expectations.
That’s the thing – these people work for a Korean company that happens to be working on a project in the US. That’s a little bit slippery to start with.
While I haven’t had to do anything like this for my current job, I absolutely broke immigration and labor and tax laws in a WHOLE bunch of countries for my previous employer (mostly in the Caribbean and Central America, ironically enough). But never for long enough or obviously enough to get caught. But nobody EVER wanted to deal with the paperwork needed for me to go onsite for a week to setup a system, it’s just not worth the bother. So I entered as tourist every time, and went home when I was done. I was “on vacation” every time – I just happened to enjoy spending my vacations installing computer systems… And same sort of scenario – you can’t hire a local to install a proprietary system that only about 10 people in the entire world are qualified to install and train you on. But I was just one dude, in and out in a week. A bit harder to hide a few hundred onsite for months.
Taking bets on when they are going to raid the chip fabs being constructed in Arizona?
Are you talking about the 3 plants Frito-Lay has there?
Don’t touch my Fritos supply!!!
Major Tomfoolery has been going on at TSMC since they broke ground. But you know, China, so nothing to see here.
I would like to know more about the backgrounds of the South Korean workers arrested. What positions were they working in? Is this a case of Hyundai bringing knowledgeable workers from Korea to help build this factory? I presume Hyundai has built similar factories in Korea – it would make sense for these workers to have a skillset not readily available in the US. That would be a very different situation from Hyundai bringing in foreign workers just to save on labor costs.
Although, we appear to have a shortage of workers at all skill levels in this country. Would it even be possible to find legal domestic labor to build this factory? Having been to Bryan County, Georgia several times, it doesn’t strike me as a place where there are hundreds of workers available to build a factory. There may be hundreds of Americans willing to work to build this factory, but that doesn’t matter if they aren’t in Bryan County, GA or willing to relocate there.
Whatever the specifics of this situation, though, the current deportation policy is asinine. I will never understand the logic of deporting people who are working and (immigration status aside) law abiding. Further, illegal immigration has been winked and nodded at over the last few decades – it is beneficial for politicians to have affordable labor to keep prices down, particularly when you can scapegoat those same laborers when politically expedient. It is shitty to demonize and deport people when our country has tacitly invited them and benefited from their presence for decades.
A battery plant, requires a very clean environment to manufacture in, not unlike a semiconductor plant. Various sources are reporting many (majority) individuals detained were engineers, techs and even execs. Not quite the ‘they’re sending their worst people across the border to rape and murder’.
But were they skirting the Chips Act (if involved) regs? I know TSMC did, claiming not to have the “right people” when in fact it had more to do with the right people not wanting to do the wrong thing. I’m extrapolating what happened here in the valley to this situation, I understand. However I’m in Semiconductor, involved in an expansion, understand some of the “pitfalls” to taking Chips act money, and know a lot of contractors skilled and actively in the field of “clean” or semiconductor fabs.
You would think anyone who was critical to the project would only come over on a valid work VISA, but who knows. American workers will travel anywhere in the country for the right pay, so I doubt backwoods Georgia has any effect.
The problem seems to be the availability of enough visas (another quota) and the processing time is long enough to impact the project deadlines.
“American workers will travel anywhere in the country for the right pay”
I’m not sure this is true. I have read that some sectors (particularly construction and agriculture) have trouble hiring Americans at any price.
It might be accurate to say American workers will travel anywhere for very high pay. However, there are many products that don’t have high enough profit margins to be able to pay very high wages.
If you insist on all labor in America to be done by Americans, expects to pay a lot more for some products. You should also expect other products to not be available at all. Whether you like it or not, our economy depends on foreign labor. I don’t see that as inherently a bad thing.
The cost of moving is very high right now. Even if they wanted to move, most people could not afford the many thousands of dollars required to set up life in a new location.
Most of these I&E construction workers will travel with a camper or stay in hotels. Once the plants are up and running, they will move on to the next job and locals will fill the production and maintenance jobs.
*banjo intensifies*
My reading of this situation is that since the supply of necessary H-1B and L-1 visas is so tight and difficult to obtain, companies will use more readily available B-1 visas and then end up skirting the B-1 requirements in order to keep the project on schedule. One would think the solution is to expand the availability of H-1B and L-1 (and other) visas, so that foreign companies investing in this country are able to complete and further expand operations here without being the subject of these immigration raids.
I have had immigrant friends tell me about their experiences getting visas. Frankly, getting visas seems like a bit of a nightmare. Visa reform is long overdue.
Illegal immigration could have been easily solved if politicians didn’t want an issue to run on. Presidents Biden and Bush the Younger both had reasonable solutions, but neither could get their plans passed since it would take away a convenient issue to run on.
Its a huge pain. Ive had 2 sets of frineds get married with one being an immigrant. They both got it within a couple months of eachother. We had a bonfire with just the amount of paperwork needed.
Most of my grad school friends were immigrants, from Iran, India, Italy etc. H1B’s are a bit of a sword of damocles if you get stuck in a bad situiation. and a lot of companies take advantage of the power it gives them.
Being in IT consulting, I see the absolutely rampant H1-B abuse that goes on. Both in taking advantage of the visa holders themselves, and the fact that most of them absolutely could be easily replaced with Americans, but it would cost more.
The hoops you have to jump through marrying a foreign national are ridiculous. And if you think it’s bad for the straights, one of my best friends is an American dude who fell in love with Mexican dude. Took them many years after it was legal to marry to get him in the country, and until that point it was basically impossible. And he had the advantage of being a relatively wealthy Mexican at that.
Trump quite openly told Republicans in Congress not to cooperate with Biden on immigration because he wanted the issue to run on.
I definitely remember that. It is amazing how often Trump says the quiet part out loud.
I have argued that Trump, somewhat paradoxically, might be one of the more honest politicians since he is willing to say stuff most politicians would try to talk around. The bipartisan immigration bill was a good example of that. Another great example is his support of Texas redistricting – he seems to have no problem admitting the goal is to get more Republicans in the house without actually having to convince more people to vote Republican.
Or at least staunch the losses…
Stanch 🙂
Yes, I’ve heard basically the same story from immigrant friends of mine too.
And I agree this immigration issue is too useful of a political football for both parties for actual solutions to be reached. A very frustrating situation all around.
only one of the Koreans was a B-1, and he was only doing things permissible for a B-1 to do.
All of them had the correct visas for what they did over here.
I can assure you that if necessary they will just come in on a tourist visa (or visa waiver), do the job, and go home. BTDT in the opposite direction for my previous job in more than a dozen countries. I was one of less than 10 people on the planet who could do what I did, you aren’t hiring locals to implement and train on a proprietary system, and nobody has the time to deal with the paperwork unless there is absolutely no alternative. And we had folks from the head office in Oz come over for a couple months at a time to train the US office on new releases every couple of years. That was equally illegal, and the same situation as in Georgia. But there is definitely a difference between one dude/dudette for a week to a month or two and hundreds for a year or more. Still illegal, but a lot less noticeable.
Based on the OSHA report from the fall investigation, it sounds like South Korean sub-contractors are managing Mexican sub-sub-contractors.
And the Mexican consolette report 23 people out of the 450
It does not sound like all of the people arrested were highly paid experts. This kind of thing is the reason the Biden administration put in worker requirements in order to qualify for government incentives.
As someone that works on the end user side of setting up new factory tooling it is likely a combination of skilled integration engineering, and programming folks. Then a hodge podge of traditional skilled folks like electricians, millwrights, pipefitters etc. I’d wager there are hundreds of Americans currently working there on top of the folks that were caught up in the raid. Typically, these large installs have a little bit of everyone.
> we appear to have a shortage of workers at all skill levels in this country
I don’t buy it. Most jobs on most boards in my general sphere of expertise are ghost jobs. I’ve applied for 75 and with a very impressive resume, I only got a handful of responses and one contract that pays 2/3 of what I should be paid. A friend in the same industry has applied for 476 jobs in the last year with zero results. The big FAANG and similar companies have laid off something like 200k skilled workers in the past 3-4 years. It’s dire. I don’t believe for one second there’s an actual shortage. I’m no conspiracist but I’m pretty sure the job market numbers are made up.
I feel for the South Koreans caught up in this noise. This is some-bull.
Working for a company that installs equipment around the world: this isn’t about taking jobs and/or insurance risks, this action was entirely done to make a statement.
Equipment installers/builders are there to bring specialized equipment to get that local factory up to speed and manufacturing whatever it is that they do as quickly/efficiently as possible and get out. No one on my team wants to stay at a customer site longer than necessary, and we look to handover the ‘keys’ to the factory as quickly as possible so that they can get on to making widgets.
That being said: we make sure I understand the local immigration laws as best we can before I sent a team – but inconsistent application of those laws by countries and changes don’t help anyone (or, at worst, left to a US-border guard to their own personal interpretation is just asinine).
When I worked overseas, the company had a specialized group that did nothing but ensure that the relevant visas were obtained and that you ready to go.
As do we. It’s a full-time job.
We always need to be mindful that some countries have further restrictions that aren’t directly border immigration-related. Some require a registration at a police station local to the factory in which we’re installing equipment, separate limits of work for foreigners that differ from locals, rules that change after you’ve been in the country for a certain duration (not that you can’t be there, just that the rules change), rules that are different for person’s each role, etc… And then with a worldwide team, we’ve got to deal with the rules for each person’s personal passport limits.
I’ve worked for smaller international companies that did not have the luxury of that department.
I have also gone to work in Europe / UK for my own company and never bothered organizing visas before hand because I never every had a problem going over for a week or two at a time. I never lied, just said I was there for work at passport control and they let me through.
What I’m personally really interested in, but I’m sure is quite confidential and non public, is what everyone overseas is planning if the supreme court upholds the lower court opinion that all of the IEEPA tariffs are illegal. At that point, the large crowbar that trump has been swinging around, using for leverage for trade deals will suddenly be taken away, and replaced by a popsicle stick. Seems like the tables will immediately turn, and everyone currently bullied will have all the leverage in the trade talks and such, and probably won’t be feeling super nice and cooperative.
I don’t have faith in the Supreme court to do the right thing in this case.
“in this case” was totally superfluous.
You’re right. Thanks for the downer.
I don’t have faith in practically anyone to do the right thing, basically ever, at this point…
Maybe if all those rural Bible Belt, Trump worshipping Americans who love rugged individualism picked themselves up by their bootstraps and learned new skills these companies wouldn’t have to bring in labor from other countries to get the job done. But why do that when you can blame brown people for everything and continue to enjoy your handouts that are funded by blue states? They sound like a bunch of freeloading special snowflakes to me!
Yeah all those rural farmers are clamoring for Socialism now that they are about to lose everything due to the tariffs. I have zero sympathy.
Fuck around and find out, baby. Have the day you voted for!
And it’s not even the first time this has happened; the same exact thing happened during his first admin when his tariffs at that point killed the demand for soybeans. I think the bailout package for that was like 30 billion. I also remember the press footage of the time, with a lot of those farmers saying how bad he hurt them and that they regret their vote.
I guess this time around keeping those ten trans kids out of sports and owning the libz was more important to them than their livelihood.
Can’t own the libs without spending a ton of cash! /s
#eyeroll
I’M HEADING TO THE DODGE DEALERSHIP RIGHT NOW SO I CAN OWN THE LIBS BY TAKING OUT A 120 MONTH LOAN ON A RAM WITH A PROTEST HEMI!!!! I’M GONNA DRIVE IT AT 10/10THS CONSTANTLY AND GET 7 MPG JUST SO I CAN MAKE THEM ALL MAD HA HA HA HA ANYWAY I MAKE 50,000 A YEAR WORKING IN AN OFFICE GOOD THING THAT PAYMENT WILL ONLY BE $999 A MONTH YEE HAW
I’ve been tempted to put a “Have the day you deserve” bumper sticker on my car, but I might have to revise that to this instead.
Buht uh ain’t no pussy cahllege boy. Uh don’t want to work in no tech factory. Uh wanna be a coal miner dagnabit!!
FUCK the future of the planet and humanity! ALL I CARE ABOUT IS GETTIN MINE!
And what better way for me to get mine than in a frickin’ MINE? It’s right there in the name dagnabit! Gahbless.
Looks like they got a surprise batch of slightly different brown people to blame and raid!
“If you believe there’s a shortage of workers in this country entirely because of a lack of people with the correct skills and education, then this is clear proof”
There’s no evidence presented here these companies made any effort at all to hire Americans.
I would argue that it’s most efficient to just have the expertise from your country get the factory up and running, THEN hire/train a local workforce for the long-haul.
So it’s probably less about skills and more about the easiest path to opening the doors and turning a profit.
These contractors know what they’re doing. They are saving millions of dollars by bringing in Koreans. Sure, there may be an added experience bonus, but the main goal is making money. There is nothing at the Hyundai plant that I&E techs in the US can’t already do.
Also let’s say the equipment was originally made in Korea, by people who speak, read, and write in Korean, it’s very helpful to have similar people install and train others on said equipment.
No argument there.
Evidence of what was happening will likely be thin, if it ever comes out of the ‘investigation’, with more being publicly argued by conjecture and fabrications. I’m sure official government press releases will be heavily edited and claim emotion before fact.
“Foot, meet .22LR, and if that doesn’t do enough damage, we’ll run up the caliber scale will we hit .50 BMG”
Seriously though, while I can certainly believe that there were actual labor or immigration violations committed at the plant, due to Georgia’s less than stellar reputation with labor law enforcement, this seems like nothing less than an own-goal or aforementioned shooting ones self in the foot by the Trump Admin. Messaging to the public is chaotic and scattered, every bit of news is spun like a centrifuge, and the press releases spew out conflicting nonsense like a repacked 12ga shell with an extra 20g of powder.
Especially after the jobs report that came out a couple days ago. That’s another blow to consumer confidence and car sales are downstream of that. How many of these projects will be quietly abandoned because they can’t sell the cars they’re already making?
100% agree, not to mention our president look even more like a petulant child after firing the BLS commissioner after calling her a “liberal plant” who skewed the numbers to make him look bad. Only for the BLS to still put out an equally terrible report. Shooting the messenger, self in own foot, allies, and just about anything that doesn’t bend the knee. Truly the “most transparent(ly corrupt and inept) administration in history”
The Hyundai incident is simply how departments and individuals in them react to meet financial targets.
If there is a crack down on illegal immigrants, with financial incentives, it is much easier to raid places like the South Korean factory and catch hundreds of polite people with possibly dubious rights to work, than it is to track down rude young men from Central America who run fast.
Similarly it is easier to turn away tourists at borders, with every one marked up as a victory, than it is to track down rude young men from Central America who run fast.
I recently heard of a 70 year old French woman, on a tourist visa, who was detained in New Orleans as she came off a two day cruise, because the cruise had left US waters, meaning she should have had her passport stamped.
There were no immigration officials on board.
No argument allowed, she had her passport confiscated, was given separate papers to fly to New York, then had to go through another immigration officer interview (two successes recorded for one person!) and then put on the plane and told not to come back.
She will not even eat hamburger now, and spends her days cancelling subscriptions to anything she thinks comes from the USA.
So expect many more stories of polite people on holiday running foul of the crackdown. They are always easier to catch than rude young men from Central America who run fast, and numbers are numbers.
Has nothing to do with what the president thinks he said, once incentive targets are set they will be met.
Is there sarcasm here or are you just straight up racist?
I think it’s more a comment on the laziness of ICE.
True, but the “rude young men from Central America” refrain is straight up racist.
Rude is from the perspective of the ICE agent.
Perhaps Central Americans know when not to waste politeness.
Duh, why do you think they located the project in Georgia? Because it’s a backwater (Atlanta notwithstanding) that doesn’t enforce child labor laws and will look the other way when environmental disasters happen. The Koreans have to import labor because there aren’t enough qualified people in rural Georgia. And of course, there is no union there to ensure that there ARE qualified people, or to make sure there are no children working.
Why they stuck with Kemp- who couldn’t think his way out of a paper bag- is beyond me.
I’ve been to enough union and non-union plants to know that unions aren’t working to ensure there are qualified people either.
I’ve never worked in manufacturing plants, but in the construction trades most unions do training, and work to make sure that everybody on site is qualified.
30 years ago I worked in a union box factory. Things may have changed since then, but in those days the union didn’t do any training or anything to make sure we were qualified. I think the difference is that in trades, the workers have to be skilled, while in the manufacturing plant, I needed to know how to do the repetitive task of loading a machine and stacking boxes.
Eh, that’s kind of an easy out. The I-85 corridor from Montgomery to Atlanta has been huge for the Koreans over the past couple decades. Yes, they’re setting up where the tax benefits are good and the labor is cheap(ish), but there’s no reason we can’t be levying the same exact complaints against BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Mazda, Toyota, Airbus, and the list goes on.
The real thought exercise is whether Trump would have send 300 Germans back to Munich if they were caught in South Carolina…
Well he doesn’t like Kemp, but he likes McMaster, so there you go.
I was just coming back in here to speculate about how much of this is just Trump vengeance (not against a policy or even an employer, but a state as a whole. GA has been a Trump lightning rod for a long time.)
This is 100% retaliation against Kemp specifically.
Because the alternative was Stacy Abrams and she doesn’t “look like a leader” to them, no prizes for guessing why.
I feel bad for the people who were arrested, who were probably already being poorly treated and only semi-willingly working there in the first place.
Absolutely. The culture wars will always be a distraction for what is ultimately a class war.
They were technical professionals: Engineers, techs and even some white collar execs. These were not Home Depot day laborers.
They ain’t sending dudes from South Korea to swing a hammer. Hell, hammer-swinging labor is cheaper in rural Georgia than South Korea. They deported all the highly compensated technical knowledge, which gonna be harder to find around there.
“Shortage of skilled workers” == “Not willing to pay prevailing wages”.
I have substantially less sympathy for this now. They brought in cheap labor who knowingly overstayed their visas.
Yes, this is another important aspect of this story.
Even more so that companies are, in many cases simply in a no-hire, no-fire standby with staffing, because the Administration has so royally cocked up the economy, that everyone is simply on standby to see in what ways everything blows up. The most recent rounds of jobs reports post-shot-messenger continues to paint a bleak picture.
Yep. It’s fairly common nowadays to advertise job opening below living wages for fields in various licensed and or otherwise credentialled industries, then use the fact that noone will work for that wage in X country as a reason to get a visa worker from some other country whose ability to live in X country is dependent on them being employed, so often enough they’ll do illegal shit their company orders them to do in order to avoid being deported.
You don’t really have worker’s rights or even human rights when if you piss off your employer you’re gonna get deported.
To be a frank a living wage is not one where you have to live 20 people to a rental, like some workers at the Hyundai plant have claimed.
boy I wish this could be stickied to the top of this post as this constantly gets buried under the general “immigrants” discussion. This is a huge part of it – capitalism demands this.
Companies are devaluing the people that live (legally) in the country….they are not investing in local pool and just going for bottom dollar. And this is not US specific. Welcome to the global market
Ironically, if this were based on remote work there would be no story, just a random few hundred layoffs. Sadly, that happens all the time, but in this case it involved physical human presence, so it’s much more newsworthy.
We should really build a big net in the Pacific Ocean to keep these people from arriving on our shores. And we can make South Korea pay for it.
See how dumb that sounds?
That’s what the golden dome or whatever is for! Shoot down any airliner that dares to bring non-Americans in.
The ICE stuff has been very heavyhanded, but IMO this will be the one that changes things a bit. This time they went after people from a strong allied nation, building high-tech facilities, which are almost entirely staffed by Americans. This is the definition of shooting yourself in the foot by cracking down on (borrowing Trump’s idiocy to use against him) “The kinds of high-quality immigrants that we want here.”
The only sad part is I don’t think S Korea will do or say much, they still need us too much because of their crazy neighbor.
We are also the crazy neighbor.
But we live a good ways down the block from those other turds.
This will change nothing. They went after the workers, not the companies that imported them to begin with. When they go after the executives who knowingly enable this kind of situation, things might start to change.
It was noticed that in certain parts of Boston, Cambridge and Waltham that asking rents were down 20-25% during the summer, over the student move-in rental period. Landlords and property owners were genuinely fighting to ensure they filled rentals.
This isn’t conjecture, either. Zillow and other aggregators have the hard data. Usually this is the priciest part of the year. This year it clearly won’t be.
Those prices are (sadly) recovering, but the Boston area (within 15 miles of the center of Boston) has an ephemeral student population of about 400,000, many of which are here on visas for the no-name universities such as Harvard, MIT, Boston College, Boston University, UMASS, Northeastern, Tufts, Brandeis, Bentley and dozens of others.
I’ve not yet dug around to see how university enrollment numbers were affected, but just looking at the very material impact on the rental market in student housing areas, it wasn’t zero. I expect enrollment to be down at least a few percent.
The metro has at least another five tentpole industries (finance, insurance, healthcare, biotech, software), but there was an impact.
I’m a bit conflicted on this. Foreign students are often subsidized by their home nations, and domestic students and regular people have to compete with those much deeper pockets for rental properties.
In general, I have little sympathy for landlords and don’t mind them feeling the heat when they have been raking in the cash for a very long time.
I also have very little sympathy for the universities in the area who hold billions of dollars in their endowments and hold hundreds of millions of dollars in prime real estate tax-free.
Fuck landlords. I can count on one finger the amount of good landlords I have had. They need a market correction.
I was good landlord. But I was just renting the place out to cover the mortgage until I could sell it. Fixed things when they broke, never raised the rent and then just cleaned the place and listed it when the tenants moved out.
If I were doing it to profit, I would have been just as bad as the rest.
You are the shining beacon of what a landlord should be.
I have a good one, but I know I’m in the minority. He’s just a retired local guy who worked for the Navy and had the good sense to buy a multifamily when he was young. He’s not trying to get rich, I’m paying way below market.
On the other hand, I know of another local landlord who DOUBLED her rents a few years ago simply because she could.
Most of the large apartment developments use software that sets the rents. They have enough data to know when it makes more sense to let an apartment sit empty rather than lowering rent to fill it.
Once those large complexes publish their rent prices, individual landlords with a couple of rental units usually just follow along.
Trump trying to kick out foreign students frustrates the hell out of me. Exports aren’t limited to physical goods made in factories. In the context of foreign students, education is best thought of as an export. Why focus on trade deficits of physical goods when other forms of trade are just as valuable?
Plus, most foreign students are paying full freight – that is a huge source of revenue for universities who use said revenue to pay the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of Americans to work for universities in some capacity.
I also don’t like the idea of turning away talented individuals from the US. Talented foreign students often turn into talented naturalized US citizens. It clearly benefits our country to have first crack at hiring these people. Why are we actively ceding these opportunities to other countries?
This administration’s main goal is cruelty. They thrive on it. They’re creating a brain drain of epic proportions, setting this country back decades. They don’t care though, as long as they keep the brown people and anyone with the nerve to protest genocide out.
Cruelty definitely appears to be an intentional feature of this administration.
I’m genuinely distressed at how positively cruelty is received by a substantial portion of this country.
There’s no hate like Christian love.
I consider myself a Christian. I think the biggest disappointment for me is how my fellow “Christians” have treated immigrants. I don’t think enforcing immigration laws is inherently immoral, but the hatred, scapegoating, and abuse of immigrants is not okay.
At this point I have a recurrent mental image of Jesus facepalming while watching conservative media. His forehead has to be sore by now.
These evangelical christian nationalists that make up his base are a completely different animal.
And his hand, what with the thorns and such.
We’ve moved onto supply side Jesus.
https://imgur.com/gallery/gospel-of-supply-side-jesus-bCqRp
Damn that is poignant.
If you can’t improve my situation, at least hurt someone I don’t like.
The Boston metro area is in a very precarious state at the moment – the lifescience industries that drive the local economy already were out beyond their ski-tips before the NIH started cancelling grants. The one good thing now – now is the time to start a new lifescience business, the labor pool has never been better.
The foreign students and their families seem to do nothing but spend money when they are in town. Seriously the amount of money spent by Asian, Middle East-ers, and even European and Latin American (Latin America has huge economic inequality and the rich families do sent their kids North for college & grad school) is mind boggling. Newbury street supports multiple stores where you can pay $1,000 or more for a coat, and they stay in business – in some cases the folks at the store will tell you that their best months are move-in and graduation months, and their stores overall are usually the highest grossing stores in their networks. Many of these stores employ staff that can speak Mandarin….
The ICE raids will make foreign companies send over (or via Zoom/Teams/WhatsApp/etc to not find out how comfortable ICE detention is) their execs to meet with our president, say how many hundreds of billions they’re planning on investing, get a promise of reduced tarifffs and then not do it because they literally have no idea what changes will happen tomorrow. Look at the tech bro dinner where Zuck pulled a number out of thin air. There’s no intention of actually spending that money. But it looks good in the headlines. That’s what this president cares about. Actually doing the work is for suckers.
And, as has been the case with almost everything in Trump 2.0, the exact same thing happened last time he was in office. He got vague promises to invest $X00 million dollars in the US and because none of it was binding, none of it actually happened. He got played like the sucker he is.
In this world, nothing is certain except for death, taxes, racism, exploitation and the never ending quest for more money.
I think the laws and enforcement that supports sub contractors and contract workers are slimy.
Also this happened at and EV battery plant. There is a large number of this administration’s supporters who hate renewable energy batteries and hate EVs. This was a message.
They looove money though. And what better way to own the libs than using those batteries to store ultra cheap wind and solar power a few hours so as to charge those libs many times more?
The last place I worked, I had to toe the line about subcontractors and their respective legality with regards to US immigration. The guys we hired had proper paperwork. They were subcontracted to do the job, and we stopped there, never asking about who was going to help. When customers asked about the crews we knew how to phrase it to not get ourselves in trouble.
I knew it was slimy. I also knew the guys we hired were mostly just looking to make some money and support their families. It’s been bad policy for a while, and this current administration is not looking like they’ll do anything to change it; just like the last administration, and the one before that, and…
and it also get worse when companies use contractors and sub contractors to avoid having benefited employees.
At the end of the day, it really is just the simple fact that the current administration is staffed by hateful ghouls and yes men from the TV who all answer to a dumpy cartoon mayor who also happens to be a diddler. Occam’s Razor and all that.
I could counter with Hanlon’s Razor, but I think they end up in the same place this time.
The Hyundai plant was only raided because it was low hanging fruit for ICE to help meet their batshit quota.