The question of finding cheap competent programmers has already been answered via remote work.

There are tons of agencies who provide access to good to excellent talent from abroad (India, Eastern Europe even Latin America if you prefer same time zone) for a fraction of what the US market offers (even after accounting for overhead).

You can literally find someone vetted to work on your project within hours. No mess with payrolls, insurance and whatnot, you just pay a consulting fee.

So if the H1Bs were not really better than the expensive local and cheap remote talent, why would the companies get into this mess?