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President Donald Trump announced plans on Tuesday to introduce a “gold card” visa program, offering a path to citizenship for an investment of $5 million. This would replace the existing 35-year-old investor visa.
“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,” Trump stated at the Oval Office.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced that the “Trump Gold Card” is slated to replace EB-5 visas within a fortnight. The EB-5 visa, established by Congress in 1990, aims to stimulate foreign investment by granting visas to individuals investing approximately $1 million in a business that creates at least 10 jobs.
Lutnick clarified that the gold card—essentially a green card granting permanent legal residency—would increase the investment threshold for investors while eliminating fraud and “nonsense” associated with the EB-5 program. Similar to other green cards, it would offer a pathway to citizenship.
According to the Homeland Security Department’s latest Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, around 8,000 individuals obtained investor visas in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2022. A 2021 report by the Congressional Research Service indicated that EB-5 visas carry the risk of fraud, particularly concerning the verification of the legal origin of funds.
Investor visas are a widespread practice globally. Henley & Partners, an advisory firm, notes that over 100 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Malta, Australia, Canada, and Italy, offer “golden visas” to wealthy individuals.
Trump did not specify any job creation requirements. Although the number of EB-5 visas is limited, Trump suggested that the federal government could issue 10 million “gold cards” to lower the deficit, saying it “could be great, maybe it will be fantastic.”
“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,” he explained.
While Congress determines the requirements for citizenship, Trump asserted that “gold cards” would not require congressional approval.