When ICE visited a new battery plant run by the Korean firm Hyundai last week, they went to find several aliens working there illegally – from Latin America. They were probably not expecting to roll up hundreds of illegal South Korean workers at the same time.

This came as a surprise to the national media and even some immigration experts. But the problems underlying ICE’s haul of illegal Korean labor are no secret.

First, the B visitor’s visa. The B-1 is for business trips, the B-2 is for personal reasons like tourism or visiting relatives. There are so many different things an alien can do on a B that they are normally issued as one B1/B2 visa to keep it simple.

The B visa only allows a foreigner to apply for entry to the U.S. at an air or land port. There, Customs and Border Protection lets them in for a certain period. Most often, that is six months.

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Although an alien can’t work full-time on a B visa for an extended period, they are permitted to have meetings, repair or install complex, proprietary machinery, and carry out specialist training for American workers. So, some of the Koreans could have applied for B visas and have come to Georgia to work on machinery or train Americans to do it. So far, so legal.

But Koreans are also allowed to enter the U.S. under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) for up to 90 days for business or pleasure. Under the VWP, they are expressly not allowed to work. Still, visitors from many countries have abused the VWP, for example Israeli youth coming on VWP and selling Dead Sea salts in shopping malls for the summer, or Chileans coming to commit organized burglary.

It seems that some of the Koreans came under the VWP and were working illegally. Most probably, they were working for subcontractors that Hyundai hired for labor. Hyundai may have done so in good faith, assuming that the subcontractors were doing due diligence. But using subcontractors to avoid scrutiny and bring in cheap labor is a common tactic among big and small American and foreign companies.

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Then there is the H-1B. Despite their statutory purpose, and several attempts to fix loopholes, H-1Bs have been abused to replace American workers and as a source of cheap labor for a generation. U.S. companies from Alphabet to Walmart employ hundreds of thousands of H-1B foreign workers, sometimes directly but often through outsourcing companies like Cognizant, HCL or Tata Consultancy Services. Most of the big ones are based in India or owned by Indians, and India is the source of nearly all their workers.

In addition to the H-1B, companies also misuse the L visa, which is for intra-company transfers. In theory, this should be for a foreign company, like Volvo or Toshiba, to bring in an executive for a few years to work in their U.S. branch then go home. However, the L has been abused by mom-and-pop motels and restaurants to bring in relatives, and as a back door when the H-1B annual numerical caps are reached.

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When I was issuing visas in India 25 years ago, large Indian out-sourcing/consultancy firms would hire young people out of college. After the minimum 12 months that they had to work for the company before being eligible for an L visa, they would send them to work for their U.S. subsidiary. They would farm them out as "consultants" to American companies, taking a fat cut.

Apart from the visa fraud and abuse, the Hyundai debacle sheds light on one other question: if Hyundai wants to hire Americans, can they? In the skilled technical areas, yes – there are plenty of U.S. STEM graduates not working in that field, and unemployment for recent graduates is twice that of older workers. But factories need skilled blue-collar labor too. In Georgia, only half of eighth graders scored "at or above basic" and only a quarter "at or above proficient" in math.

As I write in my book, "The Ten Woke Commandments (You Must Not Obey)," U.S. K-12 education has gone from world-beating to self-defeating, thanks to a combination of bad teaching methods, low standards and individual failure.

Marxist educational ideology looks at every failing grade as evidence of systemic racism, rather than lack of application or poor teaching. Instead of doing what works – banning phones, keeping discipline, maintaining grade and test standards, and working longer and harder – they look to fads like "culturally-responsive" teaching, "living mathematx" ("a new form of mathematics where humans are no longer centered"), and "Nepantla." That, "employed in a ‘mathematx’ context," means a kid can get the answer wrong and the teacher can grade it right.

Foreign investment in the U.S. can be a win/win, but only on fair terms. To avoid more Hyundai debacles, we need two things.

First, we should not let American or foreign companies import cheap labor to compete with our own graduates and workers. Other than perhaps a few managers, technical specialists and native language speakers, companies like Hyundai can recruit most of their American workforce here in the U.S. 

Second, U.S. states have to get serious about fixing their education systems and train kids for the jobs of today and tomorrow.

No more excuses, nonsense and Nepantla – just the basics, and fast.