26
Feb
Feb
TRUMP PROPOSES “GOLD CARD” VISA WITH PATH TO CITIZENSHIP FOR $5 MILLION
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CapitalTimesNews / 1 week
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- 2 min read
President Donald Trump announced plans to offer a “gold card” visa with a path to citizenship for $5 million, replacing the 35-year-old EB-5 visa program for investors. “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” would replace EB-5 visas in two weeks. The new program would raise the price of admission for investors and eliminate fraud and “nonsense” associated with the EB-5 program. Like other green cards, it would include a path to citizenship. About 8,000 people obtained investor visas in the 12-month period ending September 30, 2022. The Congressional Research Service reported in 2021 that EB-5 visas pose risks of fraud, including verification that funds were obtained legally. Trump made no mention of the requirements for job creation, which is a key component of the EB-5 program. He suggested that the federal government could sell 10 million “gold cards” to reduce the deficit. “It could be great, maybe it will be fantastic,” he said. “It’s somewhat like a green card, but at a higher level of sophistication, 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,” Trump explained. While Congress determines qualifications for citizenship, Trump claimed that “gold cards” would not require congressional approval.