[neither_color]

One thing missing from the public debate and I havent seen any writers I follow bring up:

When US companies first started outsourcing their factories to Korea, China, and other countries, they were doing the exact same thing. They were just flying engineers over on business and tourist visas to jump start factories and train the workers. Typically only long term workers bothered getting bona fide employee visas abroad.

Open any Steve Jobs biography. "Jobs told me to fly to China tonight and deal with the problem"

You think he got a Chinese work visa in one day?

This is hubris-driven rule by law. As Americans we can't fathom a foreign company knowing something we don't. The shoe is on the other foot now. Foreign conglomerates have knowledge and processes and expertise that we dont have. There's literally no pragmatic way for Hyundai to get 300 employees here on short notice. They moved fast and broke things. They did what they thought they had to do to survive in a kafkaesque system.

[pfannkuchen]

I don’t really understand this way of thinking. If someone from USA breaks a law at some point, that doesn’t prevent USA from enforcing a similar law in the future. Not everything is universalist - the interests of the parties are at odds here, and restricting oneself to behaving in a universalist fashion (as a nation) when nobody else does that will just put you at a disadvantage.

On the Jobs example - do you expect the US government to enforce Chinese law there? Does Jobs violating Chinese law affect what laws the USA can enforce decades later? This makes no sense.

[jltsiren]

Most laws are little more than temporary opinions. If a law doesn't give you the outcome you wanted, you can always change it. Or you can choose to not enforce it when it would be against your interests.

I believe the point is that it's often impossible to build a factory without sending your experts on site to supervise it. And sometimes you need to send people on a short notice, if something unexpected happens or if the people assigned to that site are not available. Then the people will go in with whatever visas are available on such a short notice, hoping that it's not in the destination country's interests to stop them.

This is fundamentally not about immigration or laws but whether you want to make your country an attractive place to invest in.

[tpm]

> On the Jobs example - do you expect the US government to enforce Chinese law there? Does Jobs violating Chinese law affect what laws the USA can enforce decades later? This makes no sense.

China wanted high-tech manufacturing, Apple provided that, violating a few Chinese laws here and there.

The US now wants high-tech manufacturing, Hyundai wants to provide that, violating a few US laws here and there. Only the US can't decide what it really wants, so starts enforcing laws that are in conflict with Hyundai suppliers quickly flying their staff in to set up the factory. In the end the investment is too high so Hyundai most probably will finish this factory, but what message does this send to other potential investors?

[Guvante]

There is a difference between enforcing the law (you can't bring workers here on a tourist visa) and raiding a factory putting everyone into jail.

For the purposes of "was it a reasonable action" yes it is important to understand how the US has acted in the past.

[crooked-v]

In this case for at least some of those people there was no visa and no visa needed. South Koreans can make trips for business purposes to the US without any extra paperwork as long as it's under 90 days.

It's true that what counts as 'business' and not 'work' has always been an ambiguous line, but given that the arrestees include executives who generally haven't been historically subject to this kind of treatment, I'm sure the lawyers could make a very good argument in their favor.

[Guvante]

I am not trying to defend the actions on legal grounds.

I was merely using a steelman argument to attack the actions taken as inappropriate regardless of legality.

[pfannkuchen]

I don’t have a strong opinion on the actions taken, I’m commenting specifically on the argument I was replying to. I see that hypocrisy critique in a lot of forms and I just don’t get it.

[neither_color]

I actually dont think that Americans on business visas in China setting up factories and training workers was wrong. This isn't a "two wrongs make a right" argument. It would've been a long term strategic blunder for China if they had stopped it.

[ivewonyoung]

> raiding a factory putting everyone into jail

Source for everyone being put in jail?

[Guvante]

> U.S. immigration authorities arrested 475 people on immigration violations during the raid of the Hyundai facility on Thursday

The article this discussion is about?

[ivewonyoung]

The plant has about 1200 workers so thought I missed something about "Everyone" being arrested.

[kevin_thibedeau]

I practice a niche physical activity with <1000 practitioners in North America. It is all volunteer based and nobody makes money off of it. Seminars are distributed across US and Canada with instructor level people routinely crossing the border. If you tell the border guards on either side that you're teaching, you get immediately deported.

[deepfriedchokes]

What’s the activity?

[Zigurd]

I have a passport with Chinese visas in it. After standing in line for a few hours to get one myself, I used Visa expediters. A business visa might take a week plus the time and effort to create a letter from the business being visited that explains the purpose of the visit. The visa should be good for several months, at least. The example of Steve Jobs telling someone to get there in a day shows lack of preparedness. It was also a more chaotic, less computerized, and therefore somewhat more lax environment back in the day.

[neither_color]

It sounds like China facilitates foreign direct investment by making it faster and easier for foreign companies to set up factories and fly in talent to train local workers.

If I were in a Thucidian power struggle and trying to re-shore industry and all the new manufacturing processes developed abroad in the past 40 years I would consider making it easier for allies who want to invest in the US to do the same.