OAN Staff Abril Elfi
5:09 PM – Tuesday, February 25, 2025
President Trump announced that the U.S. could soon begin selling $5 million “gold cards” that provide both green-card residency status and a path to U.S. citizenship to wealthy or skilled foreigners — noting that the program would swiftly reduce the national debt after estimating that one million cards would be sold.
On Tuesday, Trump announced at the Oval Office that he wants to begin selling special “gold cards,” the president’s updated version of the typical green card, for $5 million to skilled, business-minded foreigners who want to move to the U.S. and create jobs.
“It’s somewhat like a green card, but at a higher level of sophistication. It’s a road to citizenship for people, and essentially people of wealth or people of great talent,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
Alongside President Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick chimed in, stating that the program would be a more effective version of the EB-5 visa program — which was enacted by U.S. legislation in 1990. It gave certain investors a green card provided they fulfilled specific requirements.
“We’re going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million and that’s going to give you green card privileges-plus,” the president added, as he rolled out the plan.
“They’ll 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.”
Lutnick continued, breaking down why this initiative would be beneficial for the U.S.
“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, which is really a green card,” Lutnick explained. “They’ll be able to pay $5 million to the U.S. government. They’ll have to go through vetting, of course, to make sure they’re wonderful world-class global citizens.”
Trump argued that the initiative had been approved by administration lawyers and could launch in roughly “two weeks.”
“Apple and all these companies that want to get people to be working for them will be able to buy a card, and for the people that are number one in their class at top schools, I see that as one of the things,” Trump continued.
“But generally speaking, it will be people with money and people that create jobs, and they won’t have to pay any tax on income outside of the United States, which they’re not paying right now. They’re not citizens, but they’ll have to pay if they create jobs in the United States, they’ll pay full taxes like everybody else.”
“We’ll be able to sell maybe a million of these cards, maybe more than that. And if you add up the numbers, they’re pretty good.”
“As an example, a million cards would be worth $5 trillion,” he went on. “And if you sell 10 million of the cards, that’s a total of $50 trillion well, We have $35 trillion in debt. That’d be nice, so we’ll see.”
Additionally, Trump assured that his administration has “it all worked out from the legal standpoint, it’s totally legal to do.”
“It’s a path to citizenship, a very strong path to citizenship, but we’re [granting] citizenship for that, I’d have to get Congress,” Trump concluded.
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