Couldn't you use the same logic to call hospital residents "slave labor" too?If there should be any blowback on the h1b visas, it should be in the medical community. If you want to see a profession where greed used imports to drive down American wages, there you go.
Essentially most every hospital uses these for cheap er labor. Since the foreign md candidate has to do 2 years here (iirc) before they have a full license, they get stuck in the er working 80 hours a week for about 40k. If they are a specialist or higher, they get used as slave labor there too.
In that industry, the abuse of these visas absolutely do drive down us wages and they effectively created this shortage of doctors we now have. I say abuse caused it because this practice of low wage is supposed to be disallowed but apparently noone looks into it.
I generally agree with what you are saying about the H1b issue though - there is a ton of misinformation on X about H1bs - literally lists of low paying positions/jobs, claiming that those are H1bs when they are H2bs (seasonal workers). As for H2bs, if the anti-immigrant types want to go after a work visa, it should be that one. These are low paying jobs (agricultural, working in hotels, resorts, etc.) that Americans could theoretically be doing. I'm not sure why there is such anger about H1bs.