Exclusive: critics accuse ICE of ‘outrageous’ and ‘unlawful’ detention of Korean man
At least one of the Korean workers swept up in a massive immigration raid on a Hyundai Motor factory site in Georgia last week was living and working legally in the US, according to an internal federal government document obtained by the Guardian.
Officials then “mandated” that he agree to be removed from the US despite not having violated his visa.
The document shows that immigration officials are aware that someone with a valid visa was among the people arrested during the raid at the Hyundai factory and taken to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention for removal proceedings, where the people arrested remained on Tuesday before expected deportation flights back to South Korea.
I honestly have no idea why anyone here on a visa would still be here at this point. I get that it’s not easy to uproot your life on a dime, but also, it’s not that easy to go to a modern Gulag with no hope of release or due process, either.
Because money, sadly.
An automotive factory worker averages around $25/hour in the US, or an annual salary of around 50K.
An automotive factory worker in South Korea averages around 17,000 KRW/hour, or an annual salary of around 36 mil KRW, which is roughly $12/hour or 25K annual.
That says nothing about standard of living though, if those 50k are all going to highly priced health insurance, rent, and groceries, then you might be better off on the Korean salary.
South Korea is infamous for very high cost of living, especially considering the very low salaries.
You can check numbeo for more specific comparisons, but Seoul and Busan are only 20% and 30% cheaper in terms of cost of living compared to Atlanta GA, respectively. Not nearly enough to make up the salary difference.
The fact there there are migrant workers already tells you the situation. People’s behaviour generally follow economic incentives. There’s a reason why South Korea is struggling with emigration.
Yep I’m not well versed in the situation there, but I know for example with European countries it generally works out in our favour (as Europeans). That said, it still doesn’t account for the very real human cost of having to live in the US 😅
What’s interesting is that the average American worker isn’t educated enough to perform a modern factory job. Don’t even ask whether we are producing enough doctors, scientists, engineers, teachers, lawyers, and many other professionals to stay competitive in today’s world.
Every so often, something hits me that makes me think I need to get the fuck out of here. Not just because of the political situation (although that is a factor, I think that “stay and fight” is probably the right answer there). But it just seems like overall the culture and the people and the nature of the place is setting itself up for a massive collapse which there is not a lot of way to prevent… even in times of no real external threats, and right now there are some big ones of those looming.
I believe all of the people sent to CECOT have now been released, right? It seems like that specific tactic was proving too blatantly illegal and unpopular for them to keep going with.
I wasn’t talking about CECOT exclusively. The Gulag was a whole nationwide archipelago of various small-scale detention facilities, which parallels what Trump is doing more or less to a T.
I don’t think it’s really fair to call immigration dentention facilities in the US gulags quite yet. They are abhorrent but they’re still subject to oversight and generally people are held there temporarily. So while there are certainly human rights violations, I can understand why someone might hope they can wait until an improvement in the political situation if they are settled here.
https://www.inmateaid.com/information/inside-the-world-of-ice-detention-centers-what-happens-after-an-immigration-arrest
https://wearemitu.com/wearemitu/news/alligator-alcatraz-migrant-detention-conditions/
Human rights abuses, abhorrent, etc. but gulags were only one step above death camps. They killed millions of people. We aren’t seeing that level of violence and cruelty yet.
But I mean I hear you, we’re not too far from that it seems.
I think you are being victim of the boiling frog effect.
Do you want to be pedantic and wait until the mass graves are discovered years after thebfact? Or do you see the escalating signs that they are going exactly in that direction?
Right now they are already disappearing people. They are already following the totalitarian regime playbook and history has shown exactly where it leads to.
By the way, remove the wool over your eyes, it’s not like the US doesn’t know the totalitarian regime playbook. They’ve used it many times in other countries to install puppet governments. The only difference is that they are doing it now at home.
Yeah. I mean it’s not a competition. They can both be horrifying things that need to be stopped.
I agree but I’m saying this is precisely the difference—people don’t feel they have nothing left to lose, and the available evidence supports that position. If we get to that point I hope people will read this passage and take it to heart.
People shouldn’t wait to get to that point when all the historical signs point in that direction.