Dollars are fairly easy to get in the black market, it's so common that's even a safe operation. The problem is about getting it from off-shore transactions. You can do that via the black market too but it's cumbersome and costly. Prior to the appearance of USDT the best option by far was to travel to get the physical money in person, so insane the situation was. I can get the criticism USDT receives but here it became the golden standard, it's usefulness simply can't be overstated.