President Donald Trump has unveiled plans for a new initiative to introduce a “gold card” visa, which grants a pathway to citizenship for a hefty price tag of $5 million. This proposal is set to take the place of the EB-5 visa program that has been in existence for 35 years, aiming at drawing in affluent foreign investors.
During an announcement made in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump emphasized the benefits of this proposal by saying, “They’ll be wealthy and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people, and we think it’s going to be extremely successful.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick added that the Trump Gold Card is scheduled to replace EB-5 visas within a fortnight. The EB-5 program, originally created by Congress in 1990, encourages foreign investment in exchange for a visa. It requires investors to inject roughly $1 million into a business that provides at least ten jobs.
Lutnick elaborated that the new gold card — which essentially functions as a green card, offering permanent residency — would increase the entry price for investors and address fraudulent activities associated with the EB-5 program. This revamped visa would also include a route to citizenship similar to other green cards.
In the fiscal year ending September 30, 2022, around 8,000 individuals acquired investor visas, as per the latest data from the Homeland Security Department’s Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. A Congressional Research Service report from 2021 highlighted the potential for fraud in the EB-5 program, particularly concerning the verification of legally obtained funds.
Investor visas are not unique to the U.S., with more than 100 nations, including the United Kingdom, Greece, Canada, and Australia, offering similar “golden visas” for wealthier individuals, according to Henley & Partners, an advisory firm.
However, Trump did not specify any job creation requirements in his announcement. While the number of EB-5 visas is capped, he speculated the potential for selling up to 10 million “gold cards” to help reduce the federal deficit. Trump expressed optimism about the concept, stating it “could be great, maybe it will be fantastic.”
He further clarified, “It’s somewhat like a green card, but at a higher level of sophistication, it’s a road to citizenship for people, and essentially people of wealth or people of great talent, where people of wealth pay for those people of talent to get in, meaning companies will pay for people to get in and to have long, long term status in the country.”
Although Congress is responsible for setting the criteria for citizenship, Trump mentioned that the introduction of “gold cards” would bypass the need for congressional approval.
