The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, said the H-1B program is a critical pathway to hiring healthcare workers and educators. The H-1B visa program was created by Congress to attract high-skilled workers to fill jobs that tech companies find difficult to fill. About a third of H-1B workers are nurses, teachers, physicians, scholars, priests and pastors, according to the lawsuit. Historically, H-1B visas have been doled out through a lottery. This year, Seattle-based Amazon was by far the top recipient of H-1B visas with more than 10,000 awarded, followed by Tata Consultancy, Microsoft, Apple and Google.