President Donald Trump is continuing to push for a “gold card” visa that would allow foreign nationals to buy their way into the U.S., replacing a controversial visa scheme that has been dogged for years by concerns about potential abuse by China.
Trump again touted his plan for the gold card, which would allow people to buy a pathway to citizenship for $5 million, on “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“I believe that Apple and all these companies that can’t get people to come out of college and come because they get thrown out, I think of it, you graduate number one at the Wharton School of Finance or Harvard or Stanford, and you get thrown out of the country. You can’t stay more than one day. And they want to hire these people, but they can’t. They’ve complained to me about it. Now they can buy a gold card, and they can take that gold card and make it a part of their deal to get these top students,” Trump said on Sunday.
“You’re going to have a lot of companies buying gold cards. So for $5 million now, it’s a lot of money when you add it up, if we sell a lot of them,” he said, later describing it as a “green card on steroids.”
TRUMP TOUTS $5 MILLION ‘GOLD CARD’ AS NEW PATH TO CITIZENSHIP
Then-President-elect Donald Trump smiles during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center on Dec. 22, 2024 in Phoenix. (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)
Host Maria Bartiromo asked Trump about concerns that the Chinese may exploit it.
“They may, and they may, but they don’t have to do that. They can do it in other ways,” Trump said.
The visa would replace the EB-5 investor visa program. That program was established in the 1990s and typically required an investment of $1 million, but that could be as low as $500,000 in areas classified as high poverty, and the creation of at least 10 jobs.
There had been unsuccessful efforts to reform the program in both the Obama and Trump administrations amid concerns that the program had been used by the Chinese Communist Party.
“Although the EB-5 program’s goal of stimulating capital investment and job creation in the United States is laudable, it has become clear in recent years that the CCP may be abusing the program to gain access to U.S. permanent residency for their members,” Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee said in 2020.
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They cited statistics that show that between 2012 and 2018, nearly 80% of nearly 10,000 visas went to Chinese-born investors and that the majority of investors in the backlog were Chinese.
It also involved the creation of “regional centers” that pooled the visa money and funded large investments across the country. While intended to promote growth in poor or rural areas, the drawing of regional maps around specific impoverished pockets was used to pump money into luxury projects in places like New York City and San Francisco.
Chinese President Xi Jinping addresses the opening ceremony of the autumn semester of the Party School of the Communist Party of China in Beijing. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Li Tao)
A bipartisan attempt to reform the program was blocked in 2021 and funding for the program was allowed to expire. It was later resurrected in 2022 with reforms introduced by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
The reforms aimed to tackle fraud, and included audits, background checks and site visits for EB-5 projects, as well as tighter definitions of terms like “capital” to prevent abuse. It also increased the level of funding needed for high poverty areas to $800,000. Of the 10,000 EB-5s made available each year, 2,000 will be earmarked for rural or high poverty areas.
Provisions also include increased Department of Homeland Security (DHS) powers to vet foreign capital to make sure it is lawfully sourced, and requiring foreign agents and third-party promoters of the program to register with DHS.
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However, the EB-5 continues to draw criticism, with some immigration hawks saying it did not solve the fundamental issues with the program. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently described the program as “poorly overseen, poorly executed.”
Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation, shared those concerns about EB-5.
“With any immigration benefit in America, if you offer it, they will come, and too often seek or use the benefit fraudulently. The EB-5 investor visa program is no exception, as Commerce Secretary Lutnick mentioned. Examples of fraud that program sees include false job creation claims, bogus projects, and pyramid investment schemes,” she said.
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“Aliens view immigration benefit fraud as low risk, high reward because it is so rarely investigated, let alone punished. It is one reason we have over 9 million immigration benefits applications pending at DHS and another nearly 4 million immigration cases pending at DOJ,” she said.
“It is important to scrutinize the current backlogs for immigration benefit fraud, deny those cases, and deport the alien applicants, which helps accomplish an administration priority – mass deportations,” she added.