Importing a H1B worker, even if paid the same as a US worker is not the same.
Certainly there are differences, I was addressing pay.
One prefatory comment before I respond to the rest: I am in no way claiming that H1-Bs aren't terribly abused by many companies. I know they are; I've seen it firsthand (before joining Google). But the context of this discussion is Google, and in nearly 15 years at Google, many of them as a manager, including of H1-B holders, I have never seen any abusive behavior. Moreover, no one I know had seen or heard of any, nor would they stand for it.
If I or any other manager -- or individual -- thought that an employee was being taken advantage of for their visa status, and spoke up about it, the complaint would be taken very seriously. This has become even more true since the DEI initiatives.
Refuse to work 99 hours a week, you will be eventually let go and deported.
No one at Google is required to work anywhere near that much, and the expectations for US citizens and H1-B visa holders are the same. 40-45 hour work weeks are the norm. Some people decide they want to work a lot more for personal reasons, or because they think it will help them get promoted (they're not wrong). Management typically verbally discourages but in practice rewards long hours.
I did that. I had a report that worked way too much. I regularly told him it wasn't healthy and he should slow down... but when it came to review time and promotion time his productivity and impact were outstanding, so he got outstanding reviews and quickly got promoted. He's now my peer and I wouldn't be surprised if he's eventually my boss, which I'd be okay with. He's a hard charger, but a good guy.
File a labor complaint, you will be eventually let go and deported.
This also doesn't happen at Google. I have personal knowledge of an H1-B visa holder who filed a complaint with HR. Their complaint was acted on and they were not punished in any way.
Take too many vacation days, you will eventually be let go and deported.
I suppose. I've never seen anyone (citizen or not) let go for taking too many vacation days. It would definitely not happen unless they actually exceeded their allowed vacation time by more than the allowed amount (you can go one week negative). And I've never seen anyone do that. There's really no need to; the vacation is pretty generous and if you want to do something like go hike across Australia for six months you can generally get a leave of absence (unpaid) to do it.
Also, employees (regardless of visa status) are encouraged to use all of their vacation time. Performance reviews are calibrated against days worked so theoretically taking time off doesn't hurt you. In practice it can a little if your'e really gung ho for moving up the ladder, not because anyone explicitly penalizes you but because always being available makes it easier to take advantage of the opportunities to have great impact. But, again, none of this is any different for citizens vs non-citizens.
Complain about work assignments, you will eventually be let go and deported.
Never seen that. Complaints about work assignments in general are really rare. Google SWEs have a lot of input into what they work on, and it's pretty easy to change teams if there's nothing in your team's area that interests you.
There are some definite downsides to the bottom-up decisionmaking culture at Google; many of the dead products are directly attributable to this quirk of the company. Products get started by SWEs who think it's a good idea and manage to convince enough others around the company, so management assigns headcount to it and engineers join the product, build it out and launch it. Then if it doesn't immediately get traction (read: millions of daily users with a trajectory towards hundreds of millions) it stagnates, SWEs migrate away to projects with better growth prospects, the product becomes a maintenance burden that it's hard to keep staffed, HC is cut, then eventually the product is discontinued. Companies with top-down decisionmaking culture start with executive champions who keep them funded and growing long-term, and in that sort of culture you can just assign people to do the maintenance and that's that.
Anyway, the point is that work assignment complaints don't happen much. And to the degree they do, there's no difference in how it's handled with citizens vs non-citizens.
And the pay is US equivalent but at the low low end of the range for the job title and salary band.
Nope, that is definitely not the case at Google.
Promotions and wage increases will be below average as well.
Also absolutely does not happen at Google. Citizenship status or visa type has absolutely no bearing on any of that.
The biggest problem I've seen for H1-B visa holders at Google is that sometimes the government doesn't allow them to renew. In that case, what usually happens is if there's a Google office in their home country they relocate there (with applicable pay adjustment, but with a generous relocation package) where they stay for a year until they can qualify for an L-1 visa, then they move back (again with applicable pay adjustment and relocation). If there isn't a Google office in their home country, Google looks for another country where there is an office and to which they can go. The UK is apparently pretty easy, so that's a common destination. Again, they stay there for a year until they can qualify for an L-1, then they return to the US. Unless they'd rather not, of course, but they usually do.
Obviously, not everyone wants to do this "one year somewhere else" dance, so sometimes they separate. That happened to a guy on my team just a few months ago. He decided instead that with what he'd made working for Google in the bay area he could afford to take a few years off living in his home country of Vietnam, so he just quit and went home rather than move to the UK. Big loss for the team, actually. He was a brilliant engineer.