Servitude implies no payment and little freedom, whereas with an H1B you have often high payment and complete freedom in all ways besides your actual employer. However, your employer is still bound by all of the employment laws of the nation and state, so real abuse is quite difficult to pull off.

I don't think this is accurate. In the US, the onus of abuse reporting is on the employee. You can abuse your employee knowing that if they report you, you'll know they reported you, and can carefully torpedo their career knowing the employee has a very high bar to legally prove retaliation in court.

Can? Yes. Do? Not really, not often.

Abuse is possible! It’s just not common, not in the sense of “servitude” being slavery or some other kind of abominable condition. Maybe you get the shit work, maybe you work more hours, but let’s not pretend these are the salt mines.

Words have meaning. When we use 'indentured servitude' in the modern context it means that it is not easy for a h1b worker to change employers as easily as someone with residency or citizenship. This is irrefutably true.

When people cannot easily change jobs they deal with worse working conditions and worse pay. I have seen people work for the same employer for over a decade because they would have to restart their greencard process otherwise.

Words do have meaning, and that’s not what “indentured servant” means, at all.

What an oddly pedantic hill to die on...

I'm not dying, and this is your hill, not mine. Words have meanings, yes? Then use those meanings.

I came to the US on H1B, and while there are some restrictions, and US bureaucracy is dumber than most, calling it "living in servitude" is absurd.

Servitude is subjective. For me knowing I can't fire an employer or client at will, having to rely on them for years, knowing that if they do fire me i have max one month to find a new job or lose my house and uproot my family, is servitude. I want the sweet freedom America promises from day one. However, I do respect people that put up with it and I am not belittling anyone.

Att least in my day, that one month deadline was not enforced.

As long as you didn't leave the country, nobody cared.

Don't take my word for it, check with your immigration lawyer.

There are plenty of Americans who view working for a wage like this. Sometimes due to the precarity of their situation (e.g. deindustrialization reduced the number of jobs in manufacturing and some engineering fields) but often it's part of the freedom that was glamorized by the founding myth of the country. The country was founded by businessmen, plantation owners, and independent farmers. Now we venerate small business owners, people living off rents and assets, etc. Many of them view working for a wage with revulsion.

> Now we venerate small business owners, people living off rents and assets, etc.

That would be great if it were the case. But it seems like a good portion venerates corporations and wage slavery.

> Many of them view working for a wage with revulsion.

Couldn't agree more with working for a wage being repulsive. I think the US needs to get back closer to the founding myth you mentioned, and farther from the cancer of corporations turning everyone into wage slaves. There really is no freedom in that. My stomach turns inside out thinking that I was in favour of that. What a terrible mistake. Nothing against those forced to work as such often limited by the precarity of their situation.

Unless you're from India/China, the wait times are not long to get a green card - plenty of people get it within 2 years. The real challenge is getting the labor certification stating that there is a shortage in skills you offer.

And you can always change jobs (albeit at the risk of restarting the green card process).