The News
President Donald Trump said Tuesday the US would start offering a so-called “gold card” for immigrants for around $5 million, even as the administration ramps up deportations and other restrictions on immigration more broadly.
It’s unclear when the new program would be rolled out or what the vetting process will involve, but the initiative would replace the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program, which allows people who invest enough into the US to apply for permanent residency. The new offering would instead require a direct payment to the federal government.
When asked whether Russian oligarchs would qualify for gold cards, Trump said they could, adding that some are “very nice people.”
SIGNALS
Golden visa is indicative of Trump’s broad agenda
The golden card signals the two sides of the administration’s immigration approach: On the one, is a highly publicized crackdown on undocumented immigrants, trying to end birthright citizenship, and stepped up border patrols. On the other hand, the desire to court educated and wealthy foreigners, or what Donald Trump described as “wonderful world-class global citizens.” At the same time, the program could offer a source of government revenue as the administration tries to pay for its tax-cutting agenda, and to cut the debt: Trump estimated it could bring in as much as $5 trillion, although that would require a million approved applicants.
‘VIP visas’ spurned across Europe due to corruption concerns
The gold card adds yet another point of contrast between the US and Europe: Cyprus recently revoked several of its “golden” passport programs, while Greece is grappling with alleged fraud in its program. A 2023 OECD paper warned that golden visas are “attractive to criminals and corrupt officials.” And the European Commission called on the bloc to stop selling such applications in 2023. While such programs can be lucrative — the Caribbean island nation of Dominica makes more from selling citizenship than from taxes — they have often attracted wealthy Chinese, Russian, and Iranian nationals who might otherwise face difficulties crossing borders, Deutsche Welle noted. Dominica’s program, for example, grants people 90-day, visa-free access to the European Union.
American right is split on immigration
The new visa further signals Donald Trump’s willingness to back Elon Musk and others — many of whom are in the US tech industry — who ardently favor merit-based worker visas, even as Trump’s more MAGA-aligned supporters decry the schemes as just enabling immigration. Former White House official and rightwing commentator Steve Bannon called Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant” in a recent Unherd interview, referring to allegations that Musk previously overstayed a visa in the period before he became a citizen (the tech billionaire denied the accusation). Those competing factions risk turning the Trump administration into a “snake pit,” a former Department of Homeland Security official told The Washington Post in December, adding that whomever Trump talked to last could have the most influence over policy.