President Trump unveiled a gold card visa program on February 25, 2025 to investors and companies, a ground breaking initiative to pay off US debt. The Gold card is a superior version of green card, conferring immediate permanent residency to wealthy foreigners with green card privileges, who pay $5 million fee with a path to US citizenship.
“No other country can do this, because people don’t want to go to other countries.”
-President Donald J Trump
The unexpected announcement of Gold card scheme is expected to stir golden visa market dominated by smaller nations, which currently worth $100 billion. The US is likely to dominate the golden visa industry, could take the market to new heights hitting $1 trillion in the next years. Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Portugal, New Zealand, Greece, Hungary are already operating successful golden visa schemes has raised billions of dollars through such schemes.
A idea of US green card was created 35 years ago, it is an identification document by the U.S. government that authorizes a non-U.S. citizen to live and work lawfully in the country permanently. Green card holders otherwise known as “lawful permanent residents”.
EB-5 will be modified to pay way for the new gold card scheme. The legislation will be implemented by Trump administration very soon, the investment rules and conditions still not clear. Currently the EB-5 program requires $ 1 million per investor for a quota of 10,000 visas granted every year. EB-5 brings in $10 billion dollars annually through investments from abroad.
“We’re going to end the Eb5 program we’re going to replace it with the Trump Gold Card”
-Howard Lutnick, Commerce secretary
The Trump Gold Card may be purchased by individuals or by companies for their employees. Companies can recruit top talent by paying $5 million towards gold card and can also participate in reducing US debt. Employers thinking about purchasing a Gold Card for an employee should consider tax implications and potential additional costs that might result from such purchase.
Gold card holders will undergo strict vetting before being approved for gold card by US authorities. Gold card holders won’t have to pay any tax on income outside of the United States (worldwide income).
US is expected to raise $50 trillion by selling 10 million of gold cards to wealthy people around the world. The US government will pay of $35 trillion debt with the revenues received from gold card leaving $15 trillion surplus.
Gold card holders do not get preferential treatment to get US citizenship.
The Trump administration is currently crafting on the law to implement Gold card scheme. The investment conditions, and other regulations will be announced shortly.
