Or perhaps you're talking about things you have no first hand experience with, which would greatly diminish the value of opinions you held about shortage of programmers.
Was it effortless? No, not remotely. But, hiring an skilled employee shouldn't be effortless. And the positions were filled in time to meet objectives.
edit - formatting
If believe that makes you feel better, then fine. It is not true for all sectors. Not remotely true for many specialized job descriptions. And not all jobs can be performed after a 6 month training period.
Now, these cases have nothing to do with "shortage", but rather, replacement. Disney's H1-Bs were not hired "in addition to" the existing workers, existing workers got replaced. That's bad.
But even that visa is being gamed, see the Peter Roberts AMA here from a few weeks ago.
But the fact of the matter is a majority of H-1B visas go to positions that are bottom of the totem pole, back office development and IT. I mean 80% of them pay on the lower tiers of the pay scales. Seems an awful waste of talent and an overall raw deal for the worlds best and brightest.
Suppose we raise the minimum salary to say 120k/yr, or if we use the salary to determine the order, what this will signal is that the more you are paid the more you are needed. And since this visa is for the best and brightest we will see that, hey, my manager/dentist/lawyer/doctor makes double what I make, that would indicate to me that we need more of those best and brightest from around the world.
But that's not what this is, there is no shortage that we need to address. We educate and train plenty of American citizens to fill these rolls. It is corporate welfare that the government is all to willing to play along with.