Immigration laws are tightening under a second Trump term, but the White House is carving out an exception for a special group – the rich. President Trump is about to launch the “gold card”: a permanent visa that costs only $5 million, but those who can pay for it and have maybe a few more bucks lying around can land in New York and Los Angeles and be an American, having secured with that investment a permanent residence and all other privileges associated with a green card, according to Trump.
“Wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card,” the president told reporters from the Oval Office as he signed executive orders, flanked by commerce secretary Howard Lutnick. “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.” The White House expects the program to be up and running in about two weeks
“They’ll have to go through vetting of course, going to make sure they are wonderful world class, global citizens,” added Lutnick, who called the EB-5 investor visa program that this is meant to replace “ridiculous.” Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had taken advantage of the EB-5 program during his first term, as his family sold shares of investment in their New Jersey skyscraper to Chinese investors as a way to secure the investor visa, for $500,000 each.
It remains to be seen how universal the application of the program would be, as Trump has taken a hard stance on immigration along racial lines. In his first term, the president had briefly implemented a so-called “Muslim ban” against seven majority-Muslim countries, which resulted in 700 travelers being detained and 60,000 more having their visas “provisionally revoked.” A Department of Homeland Security report later noted that “country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity,” and that few visas were granted to the blocked countries in the first place. The White House reversed course within two months after significant backlash.
Asked if Russian oligarchs would qualify, Trump welcomed the idea. “Yeah, possibly. Hey, I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.”
