H1B is dual-intent. You are allowed to have an immigrant intent when applying for H1B, so no, nobody would refuse it on that ground.
Anyway: my point is that "immigrant" and "expat" are not synonyms: "immigrant" has a much narrower meaning, which has absolutely nothing to do with coming from a poor country or a rich country.
[1] https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
They were probably on a treaty visa, Like E2 (which i have, it's not just for business owners/investors, employees can get this too) or T2 (The NAFTA equivalent). These visas allow you to live and work in the US for a very long time (extendable indefinitely for 2 years a pop in my case), but they have no dual-intent attached to them. They are a dead-end and if you want to stay in the US you need to start from square one with an H1B/Marriage or convince your employer to start a standalone green card sponsorship, which costs like $50k and 2+ years of processing, where the only benefit to the employer is that you can now get a different job.
It's actually kind of a problem, there's a lot of people on these visas who've lived and worked here for 20+ years with no viable route to permanent residency.
This is the reason why I would not even consider moving to the US on a non-immigrant visa. It's either green card or I'm happy in the EU.
> It's actually kind of a problem, there's a lot of people on these visas who've lived and worked here for 20+ years with no viable route to permanent residency.
That's because the INA was written in the 50s and has barely changed since, and is unlikely to change because that would require bipartisanship.