President Trump announced on February 25, 2025, a potential “gold card” program to grant United States permanent residence, or green cards, to foreign nationals in exchange for a payment of US $5 million. It is not clear from the President’s statements if an investment or job creation in the United States will be required or if a payment of US $5 million to the United States treasury will suffice to gain permanent residence. The President’s comments that foreign nationals will be “buying” green cards, as well as his transactional political outlook, suggests that the latter is the case. This position is also consistent with his comments that the funds received by the gold card would primarily be used to pay down the national debt and his estimate that his administration will be able to sell one million cards and thus generate trillions of dollars in revenue.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated that the gold card will replace the current EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, which was created in 1990 and has certain minimum investment and job creation requirements. The EB-5 program was reauthorized through 2027 by legislation passed in Congress and similar legislation would be required to eliminate it. It is possible that a newly introduced gold card program could coexist in parallel with the EB-5 program, however.
President Trump indicated that the gold card program will be introduced within two weeks and will not need Congressional approval. It is not clear how such a necessarily complex program can be made effective within such an abbreviated time frame, and regulatory action in the form of proposed and final rules will almost certainly be required. These procedural requirements will likely delay the implementation of the gold card scheme well beyond the two-week time frame.
The T&S immigration team will continue to monitor the progress of the gold card announcement and will be well equipped to represent clients who wish to take advantage of it once it is in effect. We are well versed in similar “golden visa” programs that are offered by nations around the globe.
