On Tuesday 25 February, Donald Trump, the current President of the United States, announced a new route to obtaining US citizenship for wealthy foreigners. The “Trump gold card” will act as the US version of a golden visa, a program that’s already been utilized by numerous European countries to varying degrees of success.
The Trump gold card is set to replace the current EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, which has been available since 1990. It currently enables wealthy foreigners to obtain a Green Card (permanent residence) in the US by investing $1 million in a commercial enterprise and creating or preserving 10 full-time jobs.
The EB-5 program has been criticized for enabling fraud and being a “low priced” way to get a US Green Card. The Trump administration hopes that by replacing it with the Trump gold card and increasing the investment requirements to $5 million, the country will attract “very high level people” to bolster the US economy and reduce national debt.
Making a statement from the Oval Office at the White House, President Trump remarked that foreigners applying for the Trump gold card will 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 and never been done before.”