On February 25, President Donald Trump announced the new gold card visa program, to allow wealthy foreigners a path to citizenship by investing $5 million in the U.S. economy. This program will replace the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program, which has been in place since 1990. More details will be released in two weeks’ time, Trump said.
As it stands, the EB-5 visa allows foreign individuals to become permanent residents if they invest a certain sum of money (between $800,000 and $1,050,000) in the U.S. economy, and create or sustain a certain number of American jobs.
“It’s going to give you green card privileges plus it’s going to be a route to (American) citizenship, and wealthy people would be coming into our country by buying this card,” Reuters quoted Trump as saying.
His Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was also quoted as saying, “The EB-5 program … it was full of nonsense, make believe and fraud, and it was a way to get a green card that was low price. So the president said, 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.”