Trump's Gold Visa is Bad Policy

Trump's Gold Visa Plan is Shortsighted and Not Going to Cure the Debt

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On February 25th, during an executive order signing requiring hospitals to be transparent on their prices, President Trump announced, “We're gonna be selling a gold card. You have a green card, and this is a gold card. We're gonna be putting a price on that card of about $5 million, and that’s gonna give you green card privileges plus. It's gonna be a route to citizenship. And wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card.”

He said he plans on unveiling it over the next two weeks.

Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a billionaire and former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, further explained that President Trump would end the EB-5 visa, which essentially does the same thing for $800,000, and roll out a new “Trump Gold Card.”

He emphasized that they’ll be “wonderful world-class global citizens, and the President can give them a green card, and we can use that money to reduce our deficit.”

The President said he believed he could sell a million of these cards and hoped to sell 10 million “Trump Gold Cards.”

Lutnick sat down for an interview with Fox News’ Brett Baier later to discuss the plan.

“(Applicants will be) deeply vetted, and we said that from the first minute,” Secretary Lutnick said. “These are going to be great global citizens who are going to bring an entrepreneurial spirit, capacity, and growth to America. If one of them comes in, they have the jobs they’re going to bring with them, the businesses they're going to bring with them, and they’re going to pay taxes as well. So, this is huge money for America.”

When asked how many people were waiting in this line, he proudly proclaimed that 250,000 people were waiting currently. If they’re willing to pay the $5 million, it would result in a $1.25 trillion windfall for the American government.

This idea has so many problems that it’s hard to know where to begin.

First, anyone who uses the term “global citizens” should not work in any administration that promises to put ‘America First.’ That’s a term that self-bloviating morons like Bono say when they’re completely divorced from reality.

Secondly, Lutnick said it would replace the EB-5 visa and suggested ending the visa lottery system. President Trump has no authority to abolish either one without an act of Congress. It also cannot offer more Green Cards than the number capped by Congress. So, no, this wouldn’t replace bad visas… which we have many. This would only add to the current problem; I highly doubt that a new administration busy shedding the federal workforce can vet up to 10 million new people applying for these new “Trump Gold Cards.”

Third, the math is dubious at best. Let’s say you wanted to invest $5 million into anything, let alone a new business in a new country- well, you can’t have just $5 million. You’d have to have much more. How many people do you think have that kind of money outside of America? According to Wikipedia, as of December 2023, it was estimated that there are just over 16 million HNWIs in the world, according to the World's Wealthiest Cities Report 2024 by Henley & Partners. Nearly 6 million of those people live in the United States. The Capgemini Research Institute puts the number much lower, stating that when you subtract for primary residents, only 2.6 million people worldwide have net assets above $5 million, and a third of them already live in the United States.

Even if you reached the one million or the 250,000 that Lutnick mentioned during his Fox News interview, it would just pay down the deficit for two years. All the money would be gone before his term was up because Congress simply spent too much money.

Many countries have the same type of program and have never raised nearly enough money, even if you multiply the amount they charged by $5 million. According to The New York Times, all countries in the EU earned about €21.4 billion from 130,000 individuals from 2013 to 2022. If Trump had the same number of applicants, he wouldn’t be able to pay interest on the debt for a single year.

Also, Lutnick and Trump both say it’s less bureaucratic than the EB-5 visa - the problem investors and scam artists who use the EB-5 visa complain that there are too many strings attached that require investors to hire Americans and create jobs in low-income regions of the country. So under the less string-attached Gold Card, if a billionaire from Saudi Arabia wants to buy American citizenship but has to set up a company, he makes a nonsense LLC out of Delaware and hires nobody; he’s technically created a business and received American citizenship. Either you have the strings attached and create the jobs, or you’re just selling our citizenship to the highest bidder because it means nothing. The only upside economically is the $5 million that the government will likely piss away in the length of time it takes to have Irish twins.

Fourth, while Trump said he figured out all the legal hurdles, he hasn't. The President has no authority to hand out more Green Cards than what Congress currently allocates for the EB-5 visa, which is about 10,000 annually. The Cato Institute, which regularly advocates for washing away America’s borders and destroying our country but at least understands basic legal hurdles to do so, says the President could use his Parole Authority - the same kind he attacked both Presidents Obama and Biden for abusing but that wouldn’t give them Green Cards.

Lastly, we shouldn’t sell citizenship to the highest bidder. Whether you use Lutnick’s number of 250,000 or a million or 10 million, it’s a larger population than the number that decided the last three presidential elections. Should people whose only claim to this great country built by our forefathers is that they have enough money to buy property in the Hamptons get the same right to vote and decide our nation’s future?

Trump and Lutnick are, however, correct in saying that the EB-5 visa is terrible. The 10,000 potential investors must spend between $800,000 and $1 million in investments to create at least ten American jobs in low-income areas. Lutnick referred to the backlog, mainly from China and India, because no country can receive 700 EB-5 visas in any given year. It’s riddled with abuse, fraud, and national security threats.

A decade ago, it was one of the few visa categories that a bipartisan coalition of Senators led by Iowa’s Chuck Grassley and Vermont’s Patrick Leahy worked to abolish because of the overwhelming fraud and national security concerns.

According to ABC News coverage of the problems:

Brokers who advertise overseas as agents who can help procure visas for wealthy investors have repeatedly been accused of defrauding those foreigners who put up $500,000 in the hopes of obtaining a Green Card. The EB-5 program was being abused so frequently this way that the Securities and Exchange Commission took the unusual step of posting a public warning to potential investors to be wary of such offers.

ABC News reported on an EB-5 program that promised to use foreign investment to rebuild New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Investors sued, alleging the money had been squandered or stolen, and said they were unable to get Green Cards because no jobs were created.

Critics say that while it is intended to funnel EB-5 foreign investment to business projects in poor regions around the country and in turn promote job growth, a majority of the funds are actually supporting high-end real estate projects in wealthy areas.

Coming to the rescue of the EB-5 visa was New York Senator Chuck Schumer, whose donors needed EB-5 investments to create luxury buildings in Manhattan. That’s right, Chuck, sell out the country because Manhattan doesn’t have enough multimillion-dollar high rises.

Another EB-5 program supporter was Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who has never failed to surrender his country to enrich his donors.

The National Association of Realtors launched a successful $30 million campaign to defeat the Grassley/Leahy proposal, which would be worth $40 million today. In 2022, Congress re-approved the EB-5 visa, which is not set to expire until September 2027.

President Trump is correct that the national debt and deficit are problematic; just a quarter of a century ago, President Clinton believed we could pay off the entire debt by 2012.

Yet, DOGE firing many government employees and canceling DEI training or the Trump Gold Card will not balance the budget. The United States doesn’t have a revenue problem. Sure, we can tighten some loopholes for Wall Street and Big Tech. I’d like to know why Fortune 100 Companies that depend on the U.S. military and R&D for their global competitiveness have an effective tax rate of less than 10 percent. How is it that many multinational corporations have their costs subsidized but still manage to avoid paying taxes? I’ll stop, lest I be accused of being a Bernie Bro.

The truth is that the government doesn’t have a revenue problem, and a lot can be fixed by enforcing or improving the laws currently on the books.

We have a spending problem, plain and simple. Too many people, regions of the country and the world, and corporations depend on the federal government. The solutions to that are varied, but it’s Congress’ job to solve the problem and the American citizens’ role to demand they change our current military-industrial, entitlement, and corporate welfare program.

Trump Gold Cards and DOGE can’t fix a problem that Congress is exacerbating year after year.