WASHINGTON — President Trump announced Tuesday that the US government will soon begin selling $5 million “gold cards” that convey both green-card residency status and a path to American citizenship to foreigners — predicting 1 million cards will be sold and saying the initiative could quickly pay down the national debt.
“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.
“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 to a group of journalists.
“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.”
Trump claimed that the initiative had been approved by administration lawyers and will launch in roughly “two weeks.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, appearing alongside Trump, said the program could be a more successful version of the EB-5 visa initiative, established by legislation in 1990 which granted certain investors a green card if they meet certain criteria.
“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 said.
“They’ll be able to pay $5 million to the US government. They’ll have to go through vetting, of course, to make sure they’re wonderful world-class global citizens.”
Trump said that he believed everyone from Russian oligarchs to Indian tech entrepreneurs would pay for the cards.
“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 said.
“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.”
Trump predicted “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.”
The president insisted 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.”
Asked specifically if Russian oligarchs, who generally attained their wealth through corruption, would be eligible, Trump said: “Yeah, possibly. I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.
“It’s possible. They’re not as wealthy as they used to be. I think they can afford $5 million.”
