President Donald Trump said he wants to replace a long-standing visa program for foreign investors with a “gold card” that would provide them legal permanent residency and a path to citizenship for $5 million.
Trump floated the idea during an impromptu question-and-answer session at the Oval Office on Tuesday as he signed .
“Wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card,” he said. “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.”
Howard Lutnick, who was with Trump at the Oval Office, said the “Trump gold card” would replace the immigrant investor program. The provides foreign nationals who invest in projects that create or sustain U.S. jobs with legal permanent residency and a path to citizenship.
“You have a green card. This is a ‘gold card.’ 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,” Trump said. Green cards, or lawful permanent resident cards, allow eligible immigrants to live and work permanently in the United States.
The EB-5 visa program, created by Congress in 1990, is available to eligible investors who spend about $1 million on a company that employs at least 10 people. Participation on the program has sharply declined since 2016, . From fiscal years 2016 through 2021, the government issued about 37,000 EB-5 visas.
The proposed “gold card” would essentially raise the price of admission for foreign investors, Lutnick said, and do away with “fraud” and “nonsense.”
In responding to a reporter’s question on Tuesday, Trump said Russian oligarchs could possibly be eligible for “gold cards.”
“I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people,” he said.
Trump made no mention of the requirements for job creation, but said his office will be releasing more information in the next couple of weeks.
Investors’ visas are common around the world. Over for foreign investors, according to Henley & Partners, an advisory firm. Popular “golden visa” countries include .
But these programs have not been free of controversies. create a hierarchical immigration system that gives preferential treatment to wealthy people and open the door for corruption, money laundering and other security threats.
In response, countries like Ireland and Netherlands ended their “golden visa” programs in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Spain recently voted .
