President Donald Trump.Photo:Anna Moneymaker/Getty
Anna Moneymaker/Getty
PresidentDonald Trumpannounced a new immigration plan on Tuesday, Feb. 25, stating that the United States will begin selling $5 million “gold cards” as an alternative to green cards to allow “high-level” foreigners to enter the country.
For the hefty fee, gold card holders would be granted the right to live and work in the U.S., and a path to permanent citizenship.
“We’re going to be selling a gold card,” Trumptold reportersfrom the Oval Office. “You have a green card. This is a gold card.”
When asked if he would sell the cards to Russian oligarchs, Trump replied, “Yeah, possibly. I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.”
The president said that the cards will go on sale about two weeks from his announcement, noting that potentially millions of cards would be available.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick during his Jan. 29 confirmation hearing.Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty
“They’ll have to go through vetting, of course, to make sure they’re wonderful world-class global citizens,” Lutnick noted.
The program will replace the government’s current EB-5 immigrant investor visa program, which grants green cards to immigrants who make a sizable investment in U.S. projects and create jobs for American workers.
The current EB-5 guidelines, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’sCitizenship and Immigration Services website, require a potential candidate to “plan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs for qualified U.S. workers.” They also must invest either $800,000 in an economically distressed “Targeted Employment Area” or $1,050,000 elsewhere.
The EB-5 program came under fire during Trump’s first term, as politicians on both sides of the aisle decried it as a “magnet for fraud.”
“The EB-5 program I once championed seems like a distant memory,” then-Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, a onetime chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said at the time. “The program was designed to bring jobs to underserved rural and urban communities … But the program that exists today has strayed from these goals.”
Congress also questioned Trump’s abilities to make an impartial decision on the program, as EB-5 donations had funded businesses connected to his family.
Jared Kusher and Donald Trump in the Oval Office in April 2017.(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
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Other Trump hotel projects have been rumored to use foreign investments, thoughCNNreported that it was unclear if any of those funds came from the EB-5 program.
“This is a program that’s been around for a long time, but we shouldn’t have a president making decisions about that program when he himself stands to benefit from the investments that these people are making,” Richard Painter, the chief ethics lawyer under theGeorge W. Bushadministration, told CNN in 2017. “What this program is all about is telling people you’re going to get residency in the United States if you bring a lot of money along with you and invest it in American businesses.”
“The president should not be the owner of some of those businesses that are going to be getting that money if he’s administering that program, or if his administration is,” he added.
source: people.com
