Quelling dissent on the Wagner Report

I tried to take the time to muddle through Roboseyo's report on the Report (i.e., the Wagner Report), and by that I mean it was a long read, not a poorly written one. Anyway, I was all set to make a few pertinent points, but then I pressed COMMENTS and saw this:

NEW COMMENTS HAVE BEEN DISABLED FOR THIS POST BY A BLOG ADMINISTRATOR.

I'm sorry, but the Wagner Report is off on a lot of issues. It's a conclusion looking for a justification: we don't want to comply with what we see as invasive measures, so let's see if we can make a case that they're discriminatory, even though Korean nationals are subject to similar invasions of privacy. Moreover, it is antagonistic rather than collaborative, uses self-serving but faulty evidence to make its case, and ultimately fails to do anything to dispel suspicion against the group it purports to fight for. For starters, there's this:

Also, the E-2 visa policy validates the stereotypes that we have been fighting, by putting the government's stamp of approval on it.

From a social standpoint, not a legal one, the E2 policies, if implemented, would in and of themselves burn off the cloud of suspicion. In other words, the policy would invalidate these stereotypes for the teachers that pass through these regulations. You think I'm a drug user, criminal, or pedophile? Well, I passed the E2 test, so I'm USDA-certified safe.

I'm not going to rehash how Korean nationals are already subject to the invasions of privacy that the Wagner Report claims are only being applied to E2's. It's been done, it's been said.

I'll just say now that I think the way this battle being fought this way may not end so well. Guess what? E2's are guest workers, not permanent residents or citizens. Guest workers. And while Wagner makes a sound argument that retroactively enforcing new entry regulations for people who already have their E2 visas is violating the rights of people already resident in the ROK, there is a simple workaround solution for this if someone in the government feels piqued by the Wagner Report's call for the government to apologize for human rights violations: Make E2 visas non-extendable in country. There: your "already resident" status ends when your visa period ends. Reset, start over.

In other words, after one year, you apply again for a new E2 visa, during which you are forced to be outside the country, at least for a week without any legal right of residency in the ROK. Then you have to prove you are drug-free, crime-free, and a non-pedophile while sitting in Fukuoka.

That's not what I'm recommending and I hope it doesn't happen, but Kushibo has been around long enough to remember when the one-day visa turnaround did not exist. When I was a teenager, I remember people needed six fu¢king weeks to go and get a visa — outside South Korea.

Back in the US, in college, I've worked in a daycare center and I worked for a defense contractor. Both jobs required a background check and peeing into a cup. Get over yourselves. Korea has a right to enforce a drug-free policy and check for criminal backgrounds among people who are entering the country whose backgrounds are mostly unknown.

If Wagner wants to take up a human rights case, come over to Hawaii and help out my friend from Iran who was called in by the local FBI and grilled, after which he was told he had to close his bank account... something about non-permanent resident Iranian nationals not being able to have bank accounts in the US or something.

And when you're done with that, how about directing ATEK toward the case of Matt Robinson and finding a way to work with NHIC to allow foreign nationals to bridge their insurance between visas. That is the kind of help that is needed, not this human rights abuse fantasy about peeing into a fu¢king cup.