President Donald Trump has said foreign workers sent to the United States are “welcome” and he doesn’t want to “frighten off” investors, 10 days after hundreds of South Koreans were arrested at a work site in Georgia.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote: “I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize investment.
“I want them to bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people how to make these very unique and complex products, as they phase out of our Country, and back into their land,” he wrote.
About 475 people, mostly South Korean nationals, were arrested at the construction site of an electric vehicle battery factory, operated by Hyundai-LG, in the south-eastern US state of Georgia on 4 September.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials alleged South Koreans had overstayed their visas or held permits that didn’t allow them to perform manual labor.
The Georgia raid was the largest single-site operation conducted since Trump launched a sweeping immigration crackdown across the country.
Though the US decided against deportation, images of the workers being chained and handcuffed during the raid caused widespread alarm in South Korea. Seoul repatriated the workers on Friday.
The South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung, called the raid “bewildering” and warned on Thursday that the raid could discourage future investment.
In his post, Trump described the circumstances for temporarily allowing foreign experts into the US to build “extremely complex products”.
“Chips, Semiconductors, Computers, Ships, Trains, and so many other products that we have to learn from others how to make, or, in many cases, relearn because we used to be great at it, but not anymore,” Trump wrote.
“We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them, and do even better than them at their own ‘game,’ sometime in the not too distant future,” the president added.
Korea’s trade unions have called on Trump to issue an official apology.
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