The extent to which having a four-year US degree equivalent will assist this young man in getting an H1-B visa cannot be exaggerated. It's possible without it, but, AFAIK, it then becomes a non-standard process which will require quite a bit of effort/explanation on the part of the sponsor - i.e. the immigrant will need to be quite a special person. Professional work experience can be substituted for study (I think at a 3:1 ratio, i.e 12 years of professional work experience = 4 year degree), but for obvious reasons that doesn't seem like a good option in this case.

I'm not an expert on this topic by any means, but I do speak from personal experience.