Shortly after making the announcement about the ‘Gold Card’ visa, US President Donald Trump said that the revenue generated from selling the Gold Card will be used to pay the national debt of the US.
US President Donald Trump’s Gold Card is likely to be unveiled soon as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) works on building a system to enable the administration to sell the “Gold Card” to rich immigrants. According to a report by The New York Times, engineers associated with Elon Musk’s team are engaged in building a website and application process for the special visas priced at USD 5 million apiece.
In the process, the DOGE team is working in collaboration with the State Department, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Department of Homeland Security to create the website.
Earlier, Trump revealed the ‘Gold Card’, which comes in a golden colour with the US president’s photo on one side and ‘The Trump Card’ caption encrypted towards the other side. At the top, the card features ‘United States of America’ with $5 million clearly mentioned.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had earlier told reporters that Trump’s initiative would replace the EB-5 programme, which offers US visas to investors who spend about USD 1 million on a company that employs at least 10 people.
The commerce secretary added that the gold card — which would actually work more like a green card, or permanent legal residency — would raise the price of admission for investors and do away with fraud and “nonsense” that he said characterise the EB-5 programme.
Just after announcing his ‘Gold Card’ programme, Trump said that the revenue generated from selling the visas will be used to pay off the country’s debt.
The president said of recipients that “they’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people, and we think it’s going to be extremely successful.”
Trump said vetting people who might be eligible for the gold card will “go through a process” that was still being worked out.
(With inputs from AP)
