It's even worse when there's some sort of immigration situation involved, as in, your PI can fire you anytime and then you go back to whatever hellhole you mana

It's even worse when there's some sort of immigration situation involved, as in, your PI can fire you anytime and then you go back to whatever hellhole you managed to get out through your work and dedication over the years. The power imbalance between professors and students in that situation is abysmally huge. The things they do to students are unbelievable until you see them happening (e.g. PIs asking for sexual favors, neglecting their students, humiliating them, making them work on stuff they're not supposed to, and the list goes on and on). I went through a horrible experience myself, where my daughter got kidnapped by some staff from KAUST (they played the "you are in a remote country with no laws, we can do whatever we want to you"-card). It led me to leave academia for good; I'm actually doing much better now in the industry but it was a very traumatic experience and it saddens me to think about how many people are still being abused in this context by assholes like that. I am more than willing to work on something to put an end to this, if any of you in this thread are interested, shoot me an email (check profile), it's starting small but it's getting off the ground now :).