Winning the visa lottery would be the equivalent to some as winning a multi million dollar jackpot. Just with any other type of lottery though, as the saying goes, "you gotta play to win..." Find out about how to apply for the 2009 visa lottery. The visa lottery is formally known as the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program. The U.S. government makes available up to a maximum of 55,000 diversity green cards annually. 5000 of these visas are reserved for a visa program for certain Central American nationals, leaving 50,000 visas available to be drawn at random from a pool of applicants ...