Trump sees 'a thirst' for his 'gold card' visa idea with $5 million potential path to US citizenship

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he plans to start selling a “gold card” visa with a potential pathway to U.S. citizenship for $5 million, seeking to have that new initiative replace a 35-year-old visa program for investors.

“I happen to think it’ll sell like crazy. It’s a market,” Trump said. “But we’ll know very soon.”

During the first meeting of his second-term Cabinet, Trump suggested that the new revenue generated from the program could be used to pay off the country’s debt.

“If we sell a million, that’s $5 trillion dollars,” he said. Of the demand from the business community to participate, he said "I think we will sell a lot because I think there’s really a thirst.”

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters during the same meeting that Trump’s initiative would replace the EB-5 program, which offers U.S. visas to investors who spent about $1 million on a company that employs at least 10 people.

Lutnick said that program “has been around for many years for investment in projects” but “it was poorly overseen, poorly executed.”

The new program could mark a dramatic shift in U.S. immigration policy but isn't unprecedented elsewhere. Countries in Europe and elsewhere offer what have become known as “golden visas” that allow participants to pay in order to secure immigration status in desirable places.

Congress, meanwhile, determines qualifications U.S. for citizenship, but the president said “gold cards” would not require congressional approval.

Trump said of future possible recipients of the gold visa program: “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.”

Henley & Partners, an advisory firm, says more than 100 countries around the world offer “golden visas” to wealthy individuals and investors. That list includes the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Malta, Australia, Canada and Italy.

“Companies can buy gold cards and, in exchange, get those visas to hire new employees,” Trump said. Despite similar programs already occurring outside the U.S., he insisted, “No other country can do this because people don’t want to go to other countries. They want to come here."

“Everybody wants to come here, especially since Nov. 5," he said of his Election Day victory last fall.

Lutnick suggested that the gold card — which would actually work, at least to start, more like a green card, or permanent legal residency — would raise the price of admission for investors and do away with fraud and “nonsense” that he said characterize the EB-5 program.

A pathway to citizenship as part of the new program also would set it apart from the EB-5 program. Trump said vetting people who might be eligible for the gold card will “go through a process” that is still being worked out.

Pressed on if there would be restrictions on people from China or Iran not being allowed to participate, Trump suggested it will likely not “be restricted to much in terms of countries, but maybe in terms of individuals."

About 8,000 people obtained investor visas in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2022, according to the Homeland Security Department's most recent Yearbook of Immigration Statistics.

The Congressional Research Service reported in 2021 that EB-5 visas pose risks of fraud, including verification that funds were obtained legally. Then-President Joe Biden signed a 2022 law bringing big changes to the EB-5 program, including steps meant to investigate and sanction individuals or entities engaged in fraud as part of it — meant to curb some of those risks.

Trump offered few details on how the new program might work, including making no mention of existing EB-5 requirements for job creation. While the number of EB-5 visas is capped, meanwhile, the Republican president mused that the federal government could sell 10 million “gold cards” to reduce the deficit. He said it “could be great, maybe it will be fantastic.”

“It’s somewhat like a green card, but at a higher level of sophistication," the president said. “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.”