You're not really free to leave if you have to leave the country if you don't have a job lined up immediately.

If your passport is taken you are not free to leave. You physically cannot.

On an H1B you are free to leave whenever, and under certain circumstances forced to.

It’s a black and white difference. I don’t grasp why it’s hard to understand.

> if you have to leave the country

i mean, this is meant to be a jobs visa. The fact that if you quit said job, you no longer have a reason to be given to stay, seems pretty normal. You are free to leave, it doesn't mean leaving is consequence free.

> this is meant to be a jobs visa

It isn’t, it’s a dual intent visa. Job and path to permanent residency.

> dual intent visa.

the gov't doesn't intent this visa to be dual purpose. It is a job visa first and foremost, and the path to PR is at best a secondary concern for the gov't.

If the government doesn’t intend for it to be a dual intent visa why did they make it a dual intent visa? This is all very much under their control!

It's made a dual intent because it's impossible to prove the lack of immigration intent for any long-term visa. It's not the only dual intent visa, almost every long-term non-immigrant visa is dual-intent for this reason. Even the TN, which is not proclaimed a dual intent is such de facto since the TN visitors don't have to prove the lack of immigrant intent either. The reason TN is such an exception is that it's not issued by the DoS and the concept of "dual intent" exists only as a legal fiction around the DoS procedures.

You're free to try and leave Dubai without a passport, but it's not consequence free.

I love when authortiarians use degrees of coercion to say "well technically YOU ARE free. But not free from consequences".

It's such a disingenuous line of argumentation.

that's a false equivalency.

When your passport is confiscated, you get arrested at the airport.

When you are tired of your H1B job, you can just leave. The fact that you lose your position in the queue for a potential PR is irrelevant.

You can secure another job before leaving the old one.

That's like saying that I have a visa because I can just make sure my next job has a visa.

Past: a man can own a slave.

Now: the system can own a slave.

Yeah I agree “slavery” doesn’t apply here, I’m just disputing how free to leave H1B workers are.