Korean-American gangsters arrested

I know that this is relatively old news but as I talked about in a previous post, the hagwons that hired these guys should have screened their employees more thoroughly (or screen them at all for that matter).  I think hagwons should face some responsibilities for hiring criminals.

If myself or my agency referred these guys who were subsequently hired to work there and it was discovered they were former murderers, you can be sure that heads would’ve rolled.  I say this because one of the services that we offer (that most recruiters don’t) is that we do secondary checks for all of the candidates that we refer, whether they hold an E-2, F-4, F-2, or are even Korean.  The criminal background check required for an E-2 for a U.S. citizen is extremely limited since it only covers a particular state.  Crimes committed in New York, for example, would not show up on a California state check.  This is why we use a secondary service that does a national check.

Canada is a little different though.  Since criminal law is under federal jurisdiction, a local check in Winnipeg would show an offense committed in Toronto.  We require that F-4s get a local criminal check if they’re Canadian but we don’t require them to get it certified by the Consulate as E-2 holders must.

I’m probably under the correct assumption that the hagwons in question did not bother doing any criminal check as well as a secondary degree check.  There was an incident awhile ago where a couple of Korean-Americans had fake degrees so from that point, we did a secondary degree check on everyone, including E-2 guys.  Now some might say that it’s immigration’s responsibility to ensure that E-2 applicants have all the proper credentials which I believe to a certain extent is true however, it’s also the responsibility of the recruiter/school that they’re referring/hiring someone that’s legit.

It would be pretty crazy though if someone actually got an E-2 visa with a fake degree and transcripts.  If that was ever discovered I wonder what standards immigration will come up with to further tighten the strings.