On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the launch of a new “gold card” for high-net-worth immigrants who want to move to the United States. The gold card will cost $5 million and grant holders the right to live and work in the U.S. with a possible way to American citizenship. Trump said sales of the cards would start in around two weeks, with millions to be sold.
The president reinforced the gold card would draw job creators, speculating it would stop the U.S. national deficit. Nonetheless, the details of the process are not clear, with more information being released in two weeks. Trump described that the gold card would be a high-end version of the standard green card, providing U.S. permanent residency.
“This is a gold card. You have a green card” Trump explained in a press conference at the Oval Office, indicating that the gold card would be an open path to U.S. citizenship. He added, “A lot of people are going to want to be in this country, and they’ll be able to work, provide jobs, and build companies.”
The gold card is designed to replace the current EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program, which issues green cards to international investors who generate U.S. jobs. The program, established by Congress in 1990, is administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The program has been problematic, and critics have cited fraud and abuse.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had denounced the EB-5 program as “full of nonsense” and proposed the gold card as a replacement. “The EB-5 program was full of nonsense, make-believe, and fraud,” Lutnick said. “Instead of having this kind of absurd EB-5 program, we’re going to eliminate the EB-5 program and put in the Trump gold card.”
The latest immigration statistics show that around 8,000 people obtained investor visas in the year ending September 30, 2022. While the number of EB-5 visas is capped, Trump hinted that the U.S. government could sell up to 10 million gold cards to help reduce the national deficit.