Whoever has the gold, makes the rules!
President Donald Trump has announced a new immigration “gold card” initiative aimed at wealthy foreign investors. The “Trump Gold Card” visa, priced at $5 million, offers a path to U.S. citizenship and replaces the existing EB-5 investor visa program.
Trump said the new visa millionaire program would launch in two weeks, adding that he did not believe his administration needed to secure approval from Congress. Immigration experts say lawmakers would need to approve the change. The full scope of the plan and how it would be implemented was not immediately clear, according to Bloomberg.
“We’re going to be selling a gold card,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office as he signed executive orders alongside Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
“We’re going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million, and that’s going to give you green card privileges,” he added, referencing the permits currently issued to US permanent residents.
Lutnick said the move could replace the existing EB-5 program, which allows foreign investors and their immediate families to gain permanent residence by investing a certain amount toward an American business and creating or preserving at least 10 US jobs. Critics have said the existing program has been exploited by the Chinese government.
Asked by a reporter if participants would need to invest a certain amount of money to qualify for a gold card, Lutnick responded “yeah, exactly” but suggested that funds for the visa might be paid directly to the government.
“The president said rather than having this sort of ridiculous EB-5 program, we’re going to end the EB-5 program. We’re going to replace it with the Trump gold card,” he said. “They’ll be able to pay $5 million to the US government. They’ll have to go through vetting, of course, going to make sure they are wonderful world class, global citizens.”
“They can come to America. The president can give them a green card, and they can invest in America, and we can use that money to reduce our deficit,” he added.
Trump has said he wants to keep pathways open for legal immigration to the US even as he carries out what he touted on the campaign trail as the largest deportation of undocumented migrants in the country’s history.
Trump has moved to ramp up deportations and secure the US southern border during his second term, including threatening Canada and Mexico with tariffs if they do not do more to stem the flow of fentanyl, other illegal drugs and people into the US.
With a price tag of $20 million to purchase gold cards for a family of four, President Trump says he’s taking aim at a key issue facing the American economy: national debt.
Currently Uncle Sam’s debts total more than $36.2 trillion, though the metric which has the likes of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon concerned is America’s debt-to-GDP ratio.
