The most urgent thing to do is to ask companies if they’d consider an H1B visa applicants, or international contracts and post that information for applicants to see. Taking the time to write applications to dozens of companies to receive a handful of “Sorry, when we meant skilled people, we obviously didn’t mean you.” is… well, not great.

There is a special level of WTF when you read for now several years in every business magazine that what you do is the most looked for skill-set, that they'll be millions like you needed, and having that conversation “It is so difficult to hire the right kind of people! I’ve tried that for months! — Couldn’t you argue that to get me a H1B? — Nah, it's too difficult: you have to put out an ad and wait three months.”

My point is: your brand can be associated to that kind of experience for 60% of your user-base, or try to avoid it.

Your response seems to come exclusively from your perspective, both as US-based and as an intermediary. Great products are made by walking in the shoes of every party involved.

One thing you could do too, as you have a list of candidates, is some instant feedback to employers on whether or not lobbying for a visa would make sense: just say how many candidates are available for each options, how expensive they are or, better, how the best candidates for each option rank in your game; when they might be available. That would require coding, and I appreciate you have limited ressources — but being open-source should let you hope for an interested party to do it for you. So I guess: congratulation on your strategy.