(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump is claiming that he has a new means of making the United States trillions of dollars.
The Trump administration said Tuesday it would be revamping the U.S. investor visa, also known as the EB-5, increasing the funds required to secure the status while dubbing the new option a “gold card.”
“It’s sort of a green card plus, and it’s a path to citizenship,” Trump said.
What is the ‘gold card’ Trump is proposing?
With the gold card, noncitizens can fast-track their visa status and potentially become U.S. citizens down the line for a price of $5 million.
“We’re going to call it the ‘gold card,’ and I think it’s going to be very treasured. I think it’s going to do very well. And we’re going to start selling, hopefully in about two weeks. Now, just so you understand, if we sell a million, right? A million, that’s $5 trillion,” he said.
While Trump has boasted that the new visa would be a boost for the economy, some experts NewsNation spoke with say Congress controls the budget and immigration policy, so new legislation might need to be passed to overhaul the current program.
What is the current EB-5 visa?
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says the new gold card would replace the current EB-5 program. The EB-5 visa allows qualified investors to become eligible for green cards if they invest between $800,000 to $1 million in commercial enterprise and create at least 10 jobs.
The program began in the 1990s to encourage investments in rural and economically depressed areas. E3IG CEO Matt Gordon, who advises EB-5 visa applicants, says it would be a mistake to simply replace the program.
“You’re talking three, $4 billion a year for rural communities,” he told NewsNation.
However, Ishaan Akanna of the American Immigrant Investor Alliance, says the gold card could be a brilliant idea if implemented in conjunction with the existing EB5 visa program.
“There is an opportunity here to really kind of take this forward,” he said. “I mean, the fact that this administration does and has claimed to support legal immigration. This is a fantastic way to do it.”
Would Trump’s ‘gold card’ have any requirements?
Trump said Tuesday that the gold card would not have any requirements for job creation like the EB-5 program has. Some of the experts NewsNation spoke with argued that fewer people would be willing to pay for this kind of visa if it increased to $5 million.
Trump said that Apple or other companies like it could buy gold visas and then get highly qualified foreign workers in return.