ex-H1-B employee here. I think your advice is well-meaning but far off the mark. There's two reasons for that:

- first, US visas are complicated but not that complicated. Plenty of people have been in that situation before and there is a lot of advice but online and offline about how to deal with this. Coaching someone doesn't necessarily mean giving them a play-by-play of how to do things – you can point them to the right resource.

- second, it's possible that OP's colleague simply feels trapped and just hasn't considered that it was possible to improve their situation. Even a small nudge from OP could provide a huge improvement in their colleague's life.

@OP – thank you for doing this.