Then they’d also have to pay more and not have someone they could put under their thumb.

I thought that the original comment was about a company that could not fill with H1-Bs yet they didn't contact him either. There are many reasons that he might not be contacted. I think there are plenty of US programmers for jobs that require only US persons. At least, my experience with those jobs has been that being basically qualified is insufficient to get much interest. They're looking for other things, like very particular experience, salary range, security clearance, demographic characteristics, etc.