wrong. USCIS issues a memo years ago about this problem. (Even some lawyers don't know it) If you are hired by some private company as contractor for government lab research work, then you are qualified for non-profit h1b; If you work in non-profit but do some job unrelated to research, you should apply profit h1b (maybe you can do some trick if you like non-profit h1b). See some post by Fan Law around November, 2011, it saved me