Presumably your employer needed your specific skills and genuinely couldn&#x27;t find an American with them. This is exactly the purpose H1-B visas are supposed to serve, and as you&#x27;ve demonstrated the lottery makes them useless for that - the odds of the person you desperately need getting through are too small. The reason H1-Bs work for the outsourcing firms in the article is because they&#x27;re just using H1-Bs to get cheap, low-skilled replacements for US workers. They can simply take on so many applicants that after the lottery, enough are left to fill their recruiting targets, because they&#x27;re not looking for any special skills.