Flanked by a cadre of America’s top business titans in the White House’s storied Roosevelt Room, President Donald J. Trump on Thursday launched a bold new immigration initiative dubbed the “gold card” program—a premium pathway to U.S. residency that ditches the old EB-5 visa’s job-creation hurdles in favor of a straightforward cash infusion.
The announcement came with the simultaneous debut of a sleek government website, already buzzing with applications from high-net-worth foreigners eyeing a slice of the American dream.
Trump, beaming amid the polished mahogany table and portraits of past presidents, positioned the program as a revenue rocket for Uncle Sam, potentially funneling billions into federal coffers while snagging the world’s elite talent.”This is going to be huge,” Trump declared, his voice echoing the dealmaker bravado that’s defined his brand. “People are thirsty for it. It’s a green card, but much better—much more powerful, a much stronger path.”
Unlike the 1990s-era EB-5 visas, which demand roughly $1 million investments in job-generating U.S. firms employing at least 10 workers, the gold card strips away those mandates. No caps on program-wide issuance were mentioned, nor any obligations for applicants’ companies to hire Americans—a deliberate pivot, Trump said, to fix a “broken” system choking off brainpower.
Trump has flirted with $5 million per card in past pitches but lately floated a tiered model starting at $1 million for the base option, scaling to $2 million for faster processing. Every dime, he insisted, flows straight to a Treasury Department slush fund “where we can do things positive for the country.”
Early projections whisper of tens of billions in annual hauls, enough to bankroll infrastructure dreams or border fortifications—take your pick.At its core, the gold card isn’t fool’s gold; it’s a turbocharged permanent residency permit, complete with a greased runway to citizenship.
Trump painted it as a magnet for “the best and brightest,” spotlighting a grievance that’s long irked Silicon Valley suites: the exodus of foreign grads from Ivy League labs back to their homelands. “You can’t hire people from the best colleges because you don’t know whether or not you can keep the person,” he griped, nodding to executives from tech giants and manufacturing powerhouses who packed the room.
One after another, they shared war stories of wooing PhDs in AI and biotech, only to watch visas expire like bad leases.It’s a stark about-face for a leader whose political North Star has been iron-fisted border control. Trump’s sophomore White House term kicked off with a deportation blitzkrieg—raids rippling through sanctuary strongholds like Los Angeles and Charlotte, netting thousands in the first 10 months alone.
Yet here he was, evangelizing for skilled inflows, a stance that’s sparked grumbles from the MAGA hardliners who propelled his return. “We’re building the wall higher, but leaving the genius gate wide open,” one anonymous Trump ally quipped to reporters post-briefing, half-joking, half-wary.
Enter Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the Wall Street wizard tapped to helm the economic engine room, who stepped up with the fine print. Vetting won’t be a rubber stamp: Applicants fork over an extra $15,000 for a deep-dive background scrub, ensuring “these people absolutely qualify to be in America,” Lutnick vowed. Companies can snag multiples—one per golden ticket holder—but no bulk buys for families or entourages.
And in a jab at the status quo, Lutnick touted the program’s class upgrade: Current green card holders, he noted, lag the average American’s paycheck by a wide margin. “The president wants to flip that script,” he said. “We’re talking high-earners, high-impact players who’ll supercharge our economy.”
Critics, predictably, are piling on. Immigrant rights groups decry it as “pay-to-play citizenship,” a gilded loophole for oligarchs while low-wage dreamers languish in backlog hell. Even some GOP stalwarts whisper of mission creep, fretting it dilutes the “America First” ethos.
But Trump, ever the showman, waved off the noise. “This isn’t charity—it’s smart business,” he shot back during the Q&A scrum. As the Roosevelt Room emptied into a drizzly December dusk, the website’s servers hummed louder, a digital testament to Trump’s gamble: In a nation riven by migration wars, can cold cash buy warmer welcomes?
The gold card’s first wave could issue within weeks, Lutnick hinted, with early birds from tech hubs in Asia and Europe already circling. For now, it’s less a policy pivot than a Trumpian reinvention—blending border hawkishness with boardroom allure, all wrapped in the promise of prosperity. Whether it sticks, or sparks a MAGA mutiny, remains the billion-dollar question.
Signpost News is an Imphal-based media house that focuses on delivering news and views from Northeast India and beyond.
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