WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday floated starting a program to offer residency and a path to citizenship to wealthy foreigners who pay $5 million for a ‘gold card’ — the latest development in the Trump administration’s effort to tackle immigration.
Speaking inside the Oval Office, Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters that the program would replace an existing U.S. visa program for overseas investors.
“We’re going to be selling a gold card,” Trump said. “It’s going to be giving you green card privileges plus. It’s gonna be a route to citizenship, and wealthy people will be coming into our country.”
“Wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card,” he continued. “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 and never been done before.”
The program would also allow corporations to purchase U.S. residency, seemingly replacing some kinds of work visa.
Lutnick clarified the administration plans to terminate the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program and “replace it with the Trump gold card.”
The EB-5 program allows investors to apply for permanent residence in the U.S. if they “make the necessary investment in a commercial enterprise in the United States”
Trump claimed the gold card will bring in “very high level people” who create jobs.
“You’re getting big taxpayers, big job producers, and we’ll be able to sell maybe a million of these cards, maybe more than that,” Trump said.
Trump added it is possible Russian oligarchs could qualify for the gold cards, when asked by a reporter if those people would be eligible.
“Yeah, possibly. Hey. I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people,” he said.
However, the “gold card” is nothing new and is actually a green card, or permanent legal residency.
