While much of Washington, D.C., was distracted Tuesday by the news that the Trump White House was going to -- gasp! -- take over deciding which media outlets are invited into the press pool instead of some left-leaning group of disreputable hacks, the president made some news that seemed to mostly fly under the radar: his administration will soon make available a "gold card" visa that wealthy foreigners can use to "purchase" an American citizenship.
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President Trump and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick made the announcement at a Tuesday executive order signing ceremony in the Oval Office. The gold card could replace the current EB-5 program, which Lutnick called "full of nonsense, make-believe and fraud."
The U.S. currently offers a similar opportunity through the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, which was established in 1990 and is administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). According to USCIS's website, the visa is open to investors who "make the necessary investment in a commercial enterprise in the United States," as well as "plan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs for qualified U.S. workers."
But Trump's recent suggestion would replace the EB-5 program, and instead, the Republican president plans to propose a "gold card" visa to the tune of $5 million.
Lutnick added:
It was a way to get a green card that was low price. So the president said, 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.
The topic came up again Wednesday during the first Cabinet meeting of the new Trump administration. In response to a question posed by a pool reporter about whether the new gold card program reflects the president's feeling that the American immigration system "has never been properly monetized," Trump responded:
Well not so much monetized. It hasn't been properly run.
I get calls from companies where they want to hire the number one student at a school -- a person comes from India, China, Japan. They go to Harvard, the Wharton School of Finance, they go to Yale, they go to all these great schools and they graduate number one in their class. And they're made job offers, but the offers immediately rescinded because you have no idea whether or not that person can stay in the country. I want to be able to have that person stay in the country. These companies can go and buy a gold card and they can use it as a matter of recruitment.
At the same time, the company is using that money to pay down debt. We're going to, we're going to pay down a lot of debt with that.
Lutnick, who was sitting two seats down the table to the president's left, added some additional context to the program:
The EB5 program, which has been around for many years, had investment of [one] million dollars into projects in America. And those projects were often suspect, they didn't really work out, there wasn't any oversight of it. And so, for a million dollar investment, you got a Vasa and then you came into the country and ended up with a green card.
It was poorly overseen, poorly executed.
Then you had our border open where millions of people came through. So the idea is, we will have a proper business. We will modify the EB5 agreement. [Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi [Noem] and I are working on it together. For $5 million, they'll get a license from the Department of Commerce. Then they'll make a proper investment on the EB5.
More information on this new gold card visa is expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
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