The United States has announced plans to launch a new “Trump Gold Card” visa that would give wealthy investors the right to live and work in the US—as well as a pathway to citizenship—in exchange for a $5 million investment.
“We’re going to be selling a gold card,” President Trump said at a press conference at the Oval Office on February 25. “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; plus, it’s going to be a route to citizenship. And wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card.”
While full details have yet to be released, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said applicants to the so-called Trump Gold Card visa would be vetted “to make sure they’re wonderful world-class global citizens.” The announcement follows a series of immigration-related executive orders that implement “enhanced vetting” of visa applicants and restrictions on birthright citizenship, in addition to border security measures such as blocking asylum seekers at the southern border.
The administration said the new gold card will launch in two weeks and that it does not need congressional approval. However, “any new investor visa would require new legislation which would have to pass through Congress, which is unlikely to be enacted in the short term,” Dominic Volek, group head of private clients at investment migration firm Henley & Partners, said in an emailed statement.
Many countries around the world—including Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Malta—offer golden visa programs with minimum investments of around 500,000 euros (approximately $525,000 USD).
The president said he hopes to sell a million of the gold cards, which would be amount to $5 trillion. “If we sell 10 million of these cards, that’s a total of $50 trillion, [and] we have $35 trillion in debt,” he said. Financial advisers told Reuters that the new gold card would be unlikely to attract wealthy investors who want to avoid being taxed on their global income.
The president said the new gold card would replace the US’s existing EB-5 Immigrant Investor program. Due to legislative uncertainties, “it is too early to know if the EB-5 program will stop, be phased out, or continue alongside the gold card,” Basil Mohr Elzeki, head of the Americas at Henley & Partners, tells Condé Nast Traveler.
Under current EB-5 rules, applicants must invest at least $800,000 in a commercial enterprise in the United States and plan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs for qualified US workers.
In 2024 more than 14,000 qualified investors and their family members obtained legal permanent residency in the United States through the EB-5 Program, according to government data. Since 2000, 91% of all EB-5 visas issued were associated with investments into regions with high levels of unemployment.
Those who are in the process of applying for the existing EB-5 program “should proceed with their investment promptly to secure their place under the current regulatory framework,” Volek of Henley & Partners said in an emailed statement.
This is a developing news story and will be updated with more information as it becomes available.
