President Donald Trump recently announced that foreign nationals who want to work and live in the U.S. and have a path to citizenship will be able to purchase a “gold card.” What is a gold card?
We do not have a lot of details yet as no official statement on this proposal has been made. Based on remarks from President Trump, we believe the proposal may be a green card program for wealthy individuals who are able to invest at least $5 million in the U.S. At a Cabinet meeting on Feb. 26, 2025, President Trump also mentioned that a company could pay the fee to admit or retain certain foreign-born individuals.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said there would be a revision to the EB-5 program rather than the creation of a new program. This is important because making changes to the EB-5 investor visa program could be done with executive action. Creating an entirely new category of visa or green card, which would be a reasonable interpretation of the president’s remarks, would require Congress to pass legislation.
How does the gold card differ from the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program already in place in the U.S.?
The EB-5 investor visa program currently requires a minimum $800,000 to $1.05 million investment and a promise to create or maintain at least 10 full-time jobs for U.S. workers.
The few details of the gold card proposal that we have are unclear. If it is as President Trump described, there is not a requirement to create jobs, although the president has said those who obtain a gold card will create jobs. Until we see details of the proposal, it is unclear if there will be a process by which the person obtaining the gold card proves they have created jobs.
The Bush Institute is a proponent of increasing legal immigration pathways to the U.S., including raising or eliminating per-country caps on green cards. Will the gold card help?
While the devil is in the details, right now it seems as if the gold card could be a new legal pathway for potential immigrants. But it could also make it harder to qualify for the existing EB-5 program, making a current legal pathway more difficult.
There are two major policy issues with this proposal. First, while investment and job creation are great, this program doesn’t bring in the workers the U.S. economy needs to fill the open jobs it already has. Even if you assume that a company would pay a high fee to keep, attract, or retain a foreign worker, that’s not a sustainable model to fill the nearly 8 million open jobs in the U.S. The current EB-5 program doesn’t either. Job creation is a wonderful policy goal, but we still need millions of workers to fill open positions.
Second, similar visa programs around the world have been criticized for being easy targets for corrupt individuals looking to buy their way into countries. Any investor visa program, whether the proposed gold card or the current EB-5, will need to have appropriate vetting and safeguards built in to protect against this possibility.
