President Donald Trump announced Tuesday a new “gold card” visa offering a path to U.S. citizenship for $5 million, replacing the decades-old EB-5 investor 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,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the “Trump Gold Card” will replace EB-5 visas within two weeks. Established by Congress in 1990, EB-5 visas were designed to attract foreign investment and were available to individuals who invested approximately $1 million in a U.S. business that created at least 10 jobs.
Lutnick described the gold card as essentially a green card with a higher price tag and a direct path to citizenship. He said the program would eliminate fraud and “nonsense” associated with the EB-5 program.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, approximately 8,000 investor visas were issued in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2022. A 2021 Congressional Research Service report identified risks of fraud in the EB-5 program, including concerns about verifying that investment funds were obtained legally.
Investor visas, sometimes called “golden visas,” are common worldwide. Henley & Partners, a global advisory firm, reports that over 100 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Malta, Australia, Canada, and Italy, offer similar programs to attract wealthy individuals.
Trump did not specify whether job creation would be a requirement for the gold card visa. While the number of EB-5 visas was capped, Trump suggested that the federal government could sell up to 10 million “gold cards” to reduce the national deficit.
“It’s somewhat like a green card but at a higher level of sophistication,” Trump 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.”
While Congress determines the qualifications for U.S. citizenship, Trump said the “gold card” visa would not require congressional approval.
