It was in no way the easiest: For that you have to go back to 2001-2003, where there were 195k available visas every year, instead of the current 85k. Visas would still run out, but the big race to submit on the first day, which eventually gave us the lottery, came later.

It wasn't all easy though: All those extra H-1s didn't come with extra green card slots, so even an EB2 from Europe had a very long wait.