Especially with Chinese and Indian H1Bs, the wait for permanent residency can be so long that they may have spent over a decade in the US with no meaningful connection to their country of origin, with all their friends and immediate family here.
The point is that the system creates a similar sense of entrapment as slavery. The fact that it isn't literal slavery doesn't make it not an exploitative practice worth fixing.
That phrase would stop being okay if death was something that happens not to you but to poorer people in other countries. See the difference?
Comparing your privileged life with really bad events that happen to others makes light of them. There's a reason things like "omg it's like a gas chamber here amirite?" are often frowned upon and Auschwitz is stuff of the past but slavery happens today.
Also, sorry but the last part about "similar sense of entrapment", it's not entrapment when the worst that can happen is you go home. I myself am on a working visa, yes if I get fired I go home where I'd rather not be, but I'd never have the gall to compare it to literal slavery as long as it's happening...
So yeah sorry to hear but it's one of those many sucky situations in life. The lack of options is illusory. Mental issues are mental issues, slavery is slavery, misfortune as a free person is misfortune as a free person.
Sounds like grounds to sue for the "messed up" process? If not I assume if whoever it is worked 20 years in the US they have experience that can be valued in many countries. I'd recommended checking around the more reasonable ones like Canada or Australia. As free person can.
Modern slavery exists. See things like Uyghur camps, people sold to work until death on Thai boats or exit visas in Saudi Arabia.
Having a choice to work for money or (gasp) return home is not even remotely the same? To put them under the same label is to discount the actually bad stuff.