No, that's just how it was marketed. As the links show, it was carefully engineered to allow employers to replace Americans with cheap foreign workers and to pay those foreign workers extremely low wages.
Regardless, fact versus impression and/or collusion, you and I agree, I think that H1B visas are overwhelmingly abused. I think my position if I had the power would be more akin to making an H1-B visa approval an act of Congress. IOW, very few and far between, EACH requiring a rigorous no bullshit allowed approval process.
Not just extremely low wages, wages that are so low these Indian's often live 10+ together in a house or apartment, while some of them literally live in the office spaces in which they're working.
They're also given the promise of a green card and permanent residency here in the U.S. which frequently DOES NOT HAPPEN. They're themselves replaced by another Indian contractor as their own contract expires, which means they're denied/don't qualify for their green card and have to go back home.
That's a big piece of the untold story that is so often ignored by the media, politicians, big business. EVERYONE involved is being exploited.