The newly launched Trump “gold card” can’t be used to buy groceries, but it does buy access to the United States.
President Donald Trump’s administration has begun processing applications for the gold card, a visa program under which investors can pay $1M to get fast-tracked clearance for U.S. residency.
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The concept was first announced in February as a replacement for the EB-5 visa program, a popular path to citizenship that pushes billions of dollars into commercial real estate development annually.
The gold card is effectively a direct competitor that threatens to siphon investment dollars from EB-5, which is set to sunset in 2027 without congressional reauthorization.
Investors interested in a gold card can now go to a newly launched website and pay the $15K, nonrefundable fee to start the application process. The website says vetting will include a “deep background check” and be completed within weeks, as opposed to the months it takes for other visas.
Once approved, the applicant gives the U.S. government a $1M gift, as the White House is calling it, in exchange for lawful permanent residence status.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Reuters Wednesday that 10,000 people had already signed up for a gold card and that he expected the program would raise billions of dollars.
Lutnick said the gold card was meant to attract “the top of the best” on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Thursday morning.
“Let’s help them grow America and build America. Why should we take people who are below average? It just doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
The average green-card holder in the U.S. earns one-third less than the average American, Lutnick said.
The gold card is one of a handful of new investment-based methods of obtaining long-term visas or paths to citizenship that were rolled out Wednesday.
For $2M, businesses can buy the Trump corporate gold card and sponsor an employee’s visa while keeping the option to transfer that visa to a different employee for a 5% fee.
The White House is also taking down names for the waitlist on its Trump platinum card. That investment option, which the website says is coming soon, costs $5M and allows foreign nationals to spend up to 270 days in the U.S. without paying domestic taxes on non-U.S. income.
Green-card holders are typically eligible for citizenship after being in the country for five years. Buyers of the platinum card will be guaranteed citizenship, according to The Hill.
All of the investment paths include a $15K nonrefundable fee along with other administrative and processing fees as applications are reviewed.
The gold card had a $5M price tag when it was first floated in February, but that was reduced to $1M by the time a waitlist for the program launched in September.
The new pricing is more in line with the cost of obtaining an EB-5 visa, but investments through that program come with the potential to earn returns, whereas the gold card purchase is characterized as a gift to the U.S. government.
Lutnick lambasted the EB-5 program in February, saying it was “full of nonsense, make-believe and fraud.”
“So the president said, rather than having this sort of ridiculous EB-5 program, we're going to end the EB-5 program and we're going to replace it with the Trump gold card,” he said at the time.
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