Successive US administrations for good reasons want manufacturing moved onshore, but they refuse to make a country-specific scheme for working visas (as exists for countries including Singapore, Canada and Australia), because it would have to go through Congress. The companies need both specific engineering expertise and construction workers who will stay until the end of the project. The only way to meet both goals is to hack the visa system.
This worked until the current administration implemented it's ICE scheme with quotas of 3000 arrests of immigrants per day (1.095 million per year).
This is the situation at not only the Georgia plant, but EVERY South Korean manufacturing facility, AND every US factory that uses South Korean manufacturing equipment.
Even if the administration declares all of these projects to be off-limits to ICE (and ICE respects that, unlikely due to their steep quotas), the damage is done. The images of Korean workers lined up against the wall and arrested is resonating deeply in South Korea as yet another humiliation by a foreign power.
The trust built over seven decades has been broken. This will seriously screw American workers and everyone involved in the US economy. Stupidity.
However, after making the forced deals, USA has not provided the work visas that are needed for the completion of those projects in time, compelling the Korean companies to use visas of an incorrect kind.
I see here only trust broken by the Americans, not by the Koreans. In recent years, everybody all over the world has learned with dismay that any deal made with USA is more or less worthless, because USA may not comply with it or change its terms at any time.
toomuchtodo•2h ago