President Donald Trump announced that he plans to introduce a new “Gold Card” program to serve as a replacement for the existing EB-5 visa.
“We’re going to be doing something that’s very good. We’re going to be selling a ‘Gold Card.’ You have a green card, this is a gold card,” Trump said. “We’re going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million, and that’s going to give you green card privileges, it’s going to be a route to citizenship, and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card.”
“They’ll be wealthy, they’ll be successful, they’ll be spending a lot of money, paying taxes and employing a lot of people. We think it’s going to be extremely successful. Never been done before, anything like this,” he explained. “This is something we’re going to be putting out over the next two weeks.”
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick explained that the “EB-5 program was really, you lend some money but it was full of nonsense, make-believe, and fraud. It was a way to get a green card that was low price.”
“Rather than having this sort of ridiculous EB-5 program, we’re going to end the EB-5 program, we’re going to replace it with the Trump Gold Card, which is really a green card,” Lutnick said. He noted that the process will have a vetting system to “make sure they’re wonderful, world-class global citizens.”
“They can come to America, the President can give them a Green Card, and they can invest in America,” he emphasized.
“And we can use that money to reduce our deficit. Why do we give out lotteries for Green Cards? Why do we give out EB-5 Green Cards? The President understands that the right answer is: why don’t we eliminate the deficit of the United States of America instead?”
In 1990, Congress created the current EB-5 Program to “stimulate the U.S. economy through job creation and capital investment by foreign investors,” a page on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website says. In 1992, Congress created the Immigrant Investor Program which “sets aside EB-5 visas for participants who invest in commercial enterprises associated with regional centers approved by USCIS based on proposals for promoting economic growth.”
