{"id":16589,"date":"2025-12-12T04:20:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T04:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trumps-gold-card-program-for-million-dollar-us-visas-goes-live\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T04:20:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T04:20:27","slug":"trumps-gold-card-program-for-million-dollar-us-visas-goes-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trumps-gold-card-program-for-million-dollar-us-visas-goes-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump&#8217;s &#8216;gold card&#8217; program for million-dollar US visas goes live"},"content":{"rendered":"<div xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\">\n<div>\n<div><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/author\/will-weissert\">             <picture data-crop=\"60x60\"><source type=\"image\/webp\" width=\"60\" height=\"60\"><source width=\"60\" height=\"60\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Staff headshot of Will Weissert at the Associated Press bureau in Washington, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2022. (AP Photo\/Andrew Harnik)\" width=\"60\" height=\"60\" src=\"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/418cdac\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/1500x1500+0+0\/resize\/60x60!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2Fe3%2F8e%2Fa073735b45a198ec3f917b8aeb41%2Fwill-headshot-web-size-will-weissert.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/a><\/div>\n<div>\n<p>                                <bsp-timestamp data-timestamp=\"1765406714000\" data-recent-thresholdinhours=\"1\">                    <template data-date-tpl>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year]<\/template>                    <span data-date><\/span>                <\/bsp-timestamp>            <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>                                    <bsp-page-actions>                            <\/bsp-page-actions>                                                            <\/div>\n<div>\n<p>WASHINGTON (AP) &mdash; President <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/donald-trump\">Donald Trump<\/a><\/span>  announced Wednesday that his long-promised &ldquo; <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/investor-visas-trump-immigration-eb5-gold-cards-cdb943dd1633bc234bb715fa20914e05\">gold card<\/a><\/span>  &rdquo; was officially going on sale, offering legal status and an eventual pathway to U.S. citizenship for individuals paying $1 million and corporations ponying up twice that per foreign-born employee. <\/p>\n<p>A website accepting applications went live as Trump revealed the start of the program while surrounded by business leaders in the White House&rsquo;s Roosevelt Room. It is meant to replace EB-5 visas, which Congress created in 1990 to generate foreign investment and had been available to people who spend about $1 million on a company that employs at least 10 people. <\/p>\n<p>Trump sees the new version as a way for the U.S. to attract and retain top talent, all while generating revenue for federal coffers. He&rsquo;s been promoting the gold card program for months, and once suggested that each card would cost $5 million, though he more recently revised that to the $1 million and $2 million pricing scheme. <\/p>\n<p>The president said all funds taken in as part of the program will &ldquo;go to the U.S. government&rdquo; and predicted that billions would flow into an account run by the Treasury Department &ldquo;where we can do things positive for the country.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The new program is actually a green card, effectively offering permanent legal residency with the chance for citizenship. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Basically, it&rsquo;s a green card but much better,&rdquo; Trump said. &ldquo;Much more powerful, a much stronger path.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>The president made no mention of requirements for job creation for applying corporations or on overall caps on the program, which exist under the current EB-5 program. Instead, he said he&rsquo;d heard complaints from business leaders who had been unable to recruit outstanding graduates from U.S. universities because they were from other countries and lacked permission to stay. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t hire people from the best colleges because you don&rsquo;t know whether or not you can keep the person,&rdquo; Trump said.<\/p>\n<p>Trump has built his political career around clamping down on the U.S.-Mexico border and championing hard-line immigration policies. His second administration spent its first 10-plus months launching <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-veterans-mass-deportation-5aa133955c5d378ac59da991b4ff5693\">mass deportation pushes<\/a><\/span>  and sweeping immigration crackdowns that have targeted cities including <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/supreme-court-immigration-stops-los-angeles-trump-57cc1f85ceafda0f11052b326c8b7173\">Los Angeles<\/a><\/span>  and <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/charlotte-immigration-arrests-new-orleans-trump-dc93314147e67a7642a429b228676766\">Charlotte<\/a><\/span>. <\/p>\n<p>But he&rsquo;s also <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-maga-foreign-workers-training-americans-4eef9dbcbff4f4447105f52f50e33a9c\">drawn criticism<\/a><\/span>  from leading voices of his &ldquo;Make America Great Again&rdquo; movement for repeatedly suggesting that skilled immigrants should be allowed into the U.S. &mdash; something the gold card program could facilitate. <\/p>\n<p>Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the program will include $15,000 for applicant vetting and that the thorough process used to scrutinize backgrounds would &rdquo;make sure these people absolutely qualify to be in America.&rdquo; Companies will be able to receive multiple cards, but will be limited to one individual per card, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Lutnick also said the current green card holders earn less money than the average American, and that Trump wanted to change that.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;So, same visas, but now just full of the best people,&rdquo; Lutnick said. <\/p>\n<p>Investors&rsquo; visas are common around the world, with dozens of countries offering versions of &ldquo;golden visas&rdquo; to wealthy individuals, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Malta, Australia, Canada and Italy.<\/p>\n<p>Trump said the program means the U.S. is &ldquo;getting somebody great coming into our country because we think these will be some tremendous people&rdquo; and singled out top U.S. college graduates from China, India and France as among those who will possibly be receiving gold cards. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The companies are going to be very happy,&rdquo; he said. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-gold-card-website-live-us-visa-22edbd7e65d188bbf6c8ec1d5f78d11a\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] WASHINGTON (AP) &mdash; President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that his long-promised &ldquo; gold card &rdquo; was officially going on sale, offering legal status and an eventual pathway to U.S. citizenship for individuals paying $1 million and corporations ponying up twice that per foreign-born employee. A website accepting applications [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}