Over in Montgomery, where some 4,000 people work at Hyundai’s first U.S. assembly plant, the Montgomery Biscuits minor league team hosts a Kimchi Night every summer.
Drive east on I-85 toward Atlanta, and you will pass the occasional billboard in Korean. There are at least a dozen Korean-owned spinoff plants scattered through Tuskegee, Auburn and Opelika.
When they locate plants in the United States, foreign manufacturers avoid states where other countries have operations and try to group their plants in the most efficient way. So it’s no surprise that at the other end of this string of plants making things for South Korean vehicles, you cross the Chattahoochee and come upon the massive West Point Kia plant, which currently employs 3,000.
To say that South Korean businesses and the governments of Alabama and Georgia have gone to great lengths to ensure a cordial working relationship is quite an understatement. Last week, those efforts faced their greatest test.
The centerpiece of Hyundai’s investment in the United States, and the biggest industrial development in Georgia history, is being built near Savannah in Bryan County. That was the scene last Thursday for one of the largest-ever immigration raids, with the arrest of 475 people.
Tori Branum, the Republican 12th District congressional candidate who has taken credit for the tip that led to the raid, said temporary workers at the battery plant being constructed by Hyundai’s partner, LG Energy Solutions, were working in unsafe conditions for slave wages. There have been three deaths at the massive construction site, and immigration workers have unquestionably been exploited in the past.
But some 300 of those arrested last week were South Korean nationals who were brought in because of their expertise in building the high-tech assembly lines at the plant. By U.S. standards, they may have been exploited, but this doesn’t look like the worst mistreatment of immigrant labor you’d find in Georgia, if you really went hunting for it.
Nor have these exploited immigrants been treated the same way after their arrest. The South Korean government quickly secured an agreement for the release of the workers, who are being flown on a charter flight home, where they will likely receive a warm welcome. Coming so shortly after an agreement to invest an additional $350 billion in the United States, the raid has been taken in South Korea as a slap in the face. South Korean firms have reportedly cut back on planned trips to the U.S., and questions are being raised from both left and right of the current government about whether this is still a safe place to invest.
Many of the South Korean nationals were arrested for being here on temporary visas that don’t qualify them to work here. The rules have been tightened for the temporary visas which had been extended to specialized workers, causing some South Korean businesses to use tourist visas as workarounds.
“How can we proceed when there are no skilled local workers and obtaining visas is like winning the lottery,” said an industry source quoted in the English-language Chosun Daily.
President Donald Trump has defended the raid and warned foreign companies to respect the country’s immigration laws, but he acknowledged that finding qualified workers can be a problem, suggesting that “maybe we should help them along and let some people come in and train our people to do, you know, complex things, whether it’s battery manufacturing or computer manufacturing or building ships.”
What should people in other countries think when they hear our president talk about bringing in people to train us to do, you know, complex things? For that matter, how should it sound to us?
I haven’t seen any suggestion that this raid, in a state where there are a lot of worksites with undocumented workers, might be a shot across the bow of Gov. Brian Kemp, whose legacy will be based in large part on the Hyundai megasite. However, it certainly raises another question mark over the project, which already faces questions over water usage and other environmental problems. And it casts an unfamiliar and revealing light on the immigration question as a whole.
Trump made it very clear in his first term that he was a showboating bully who used intimidation and uncertainty to aquire what he wants.
Why would anyone feel safe investing in the US?
We have a history of inviting and even begging other countries to help us promising jobs and security only to renig and send them packing when the task is done.
It’s history not new.
Excellent piece. The money quote from Chosun Daily: “If the U.S. blames Korean companies without visa cooperation, the success of local projects cannot be guaranteed. If this continues, we may have no choice but to reconsider investments.”
The raid and treatment of our South Korean instructors looks like a slap in the face to Governor Kemp’s attempt to recruit foreign investment in our state! He should be really upset at the actions of ICE!!!
I find it a slap in the face of american workers that some are claiming we do not know the complexities of this plant. Take it from someone who has been on this site dozens of times. Our american steamfitters and pipe filters are able to do this job hell, it’s only Stainless piping..we are dealing with.. Again, have seen first hand the Koreans kept almost all construction for themselves. What in not mentioned is that all the steel for the site was all fabricated and shipped from Korea, along with all other building materials. All the labor was Hispanic. The job site signs were in order, Korean, Spanish, English