Trump proposes 'gold card' visas for rich immigrants

What happened

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. would soon start selling $5 million "gold card" visas that offer permanent residency and a "road to citizenship for people, and essentially people of wealth or people of great talent." Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the "Trump gold card" would replace EB-5 visas for foreign investors within two weeks. Separately, the Trump administration announced a new federal registry for all unauthorized immigrants 14 and older.

Who said what

The new "gold card" is "somewhat like a green card, but at a higher level of sophistication," Trump said. The "wealthy" people who pay for the visa will be "spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people." He predicted wealthy people — "possibly" including "Russian oligarchs" — and companies hiring high-skill workers could buy a million of the visas.

The new registry program would fine unregistered immigrants up to $5,000 and jail them for up to six months, criminalizing what was previously a civil offense, The Wall Street Journal said. The program relies on an "obscure provisions of immigration law that have proved impractical to enforce in the past." Those "registration laws" also "have a very, very bad history" when "fully enforced," New York University law professor Nancy Morawetz said to The Washington Post, including aiding the detention of Japanese Americans in World War II and Muslims after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What next?

Congress created the EB-5 program in the 1990s to "channel foreign investment into economically marginalized areas and create local jobs," the Journal said. It "isn't clear" how Trump could "legally end or significantly alter an existing green-card program without the involvement of Congress." The new immigrant registry proposal was similarly on "shaky legal ground," the Post said.