[pandaman]

H1B is pretty straightforward and cheap: it's about $5K, most of which are lawyer fees, if you have a law firm signed up for mass processing you get wholesale discount. And it's only unpredictable for an individual, for an employer who submits thousands of applications the laws of statistics make it pretty reliable, if the approval rate is 34.5% then out of 1000 applications you will get 345 +/- few approvals.

And outsourcing does not work for these companies as their business is putting bodies into chairs on their customer's site.