If that’s true, shouldn’t the “illegal” label more correctly apply to the activity of the company knowingly employing them? What do you believe the workers did wrong?
If that’s true, shouldn’t the “illegal” label more correctly apply to the activity of the company knowingly employing them? What do you believe the workers did wrong?
Visas are granted to individuals not companies. Working outside your visa status is illegal in most developed countries.
The issue here was that subcontracting firms arranged to bring hundreds of people from South Korean. SK companies, including LG Energy Solution, reportedly advised workers and subcontracting firms to use the ESTA visa waiver, even after other visa applications had been repeatedly rejected.
If that’s not illegal, perhaps the legal system needs revamping. And blaming the workers in a situation like that is immoral scapegoating, pure and simple. It’s very on-brand for the US conception of labor rights, though.
> If that’s not illegal, perhaps the legal system needs revamping.
Advising people to commit visa fraud might well be illegal under US law, but given that it all happened in SK, would SK be interested in extraditing them? And would the US taxpayer support spending what that costs?
Knowingly hiring visa fraudsters is probably illegal, but proving intent would be difficult. And if you lower the burden of proof too far then companies will find any excuse to not hire non-white people, which probably isn't what you want.
The ESTA application emphasizes that it's personal and the conditions you have to comply with. I think that's well and good - if anything I think it would be better to scrap the H1-B system of tying people's work visas to specific jobs, that's a big part of what leads to immigration suppressing wages.