Well the reality is that US needed to offer labor market access to countries where they wanted US products access. When times were good nobody bothered about H1

Well the reality is that US needed to offer labor market access to countries where they wanted US products access. When times were good nobody bothered about H1 value etc but in tough economic times labor market access is one of the top concerns of politicians. The low level details of salary, duration, mountain of paperwork etc for visa were adjusted as per demand and supply.