Hum, brazilians are out as always...

I see a lot of cool jobs (Scala and JS) listed on Angel list, I would love to be able to apply but without already having a H1B or Green card there is no way :(

The UK too. What's the options for those not eligible? The fact that these nationalities are excluded from this visa and that there are a large-ish number of such nationals currently resident in the US suggests that there is some legit route available.

Yeah, saddens me there isn't a way in like this for us Brits,

It's no easier the other way around, trust me. And it's gotten a lot harder in the past few years.

If you seriously want to live in the states, you can try things like going back to university, or trying to get a job with a US company in the UK, with the plan of being transferred.

Or, find some ex-pat pubs and cosy on up to the opposite sex person of your choice (US immigration doesn't really to the whole un-married partners thing)!

Not sure I could get the latter option past my wife, to be honest.

I think my best bet would be to join a big company as a spits permanent employee and get a transfer,

Find an American to marry.

Not sure why this is downvoted, while it's not a solution I'd pursue it is a valid response.

While I don't blame US at all, because I hold H1. I find it slightly ridiculous that a skilled worker needs to go thru so much hoops and long-running-processess and pay around $20k for visas and GC (if done by himself), and yet somebody can just win one of those GCs, not having to work, and bring their whole family along.

The skilled worker can try the lottery too though. So another way to look at it is that he/she has 2 ways to get a visa, compared to the unskilled with just one.

You can also apply for the lottery, so what's the problem?

It's called a diversity visa for a reason. To add diversity.

It looks like they are issuing 50,000 visas this year. Any stats on how many people apply for this?

There are some interesting statistics on the Wikipedia page [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_Immigrant_Visa

TBH sthe idea off turning such important (both for potential new citizens and country) process seems very inappropriate to me. I'm aware that it seems time- and cost-effective but is disgusting anyway.

The goal of the diversity visa is explicitly diversity and nothing is more diverse than randomness. This is not the path you're expected to take if you have a pressing reason to come to the US.

Hey, I've never looked at it from the perspective of stimulating diversity. Thanks.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but it has that in its name?