Washington: President Donald Trump on Wednesday officially launched his long-anticipated “gold card” program, unveiling a new pathway that offers legal status—and eventually US citizenship—to individuals willing to pay $1 million, while corporations will be required to pay $2 million per foreign-born employee.
A dedicated website for applications went live as Trump announced the program in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, flanked by business leaders. The initiative is positioned as a replacement for the EB-5 visa program, which Congress had introduced in 1990 to spur foreign investment. Under EB-5, foreign nationals could secure residency by investing roughly $1 million in a business that created at least 10 US jobs.
Trump, however, has pitched the gold card as a modernized, revenue-generating alternative aimed at attracting top global talent. For several months he has been promoting the concept, originally floating a $5 million price tag per card before later reducing it to the current $1 million and $2 million tiers.
The president said all money collected through the program would go directly to the US government and predicted that “billions” could ultimately flow into a Treasury Department-managed fund. “We can do things positive for the country,” he said.
Although branded as a “gold card,” the program effectively grants a green card—permanent US residency—paired with what Trump described as a stronger and more powerful path to citizenship. “Basically, it’s a green card but much better,” he said.
Notably missing from Trump’s announcement were specifics about job-creation requirements for companies or caps on the number of gold cards available—key elements of the current EB-5 program. Instead, Trump highlighted concerns from business leaders who said they struggled to hire top graduates from US universities because foreign students often lacked long-term legal permission to stay.
“You can’t hire people from the best colleges because you don’t know whether or not you can keep the person,” he said.
The launch comes despite Trump’s longstanding political identity as an immigration hard-liner, built on promises to clamp down on the US-Mexico border. His second administration has spent over ten months enforcing mass deportations and aggressive immigration crackdowns across cities such as Los Angeles and Charlotte.
Yet Trump has also faced criticism from some influential figures within his “Make America Great Again” movement for repeatedly signaling openness to high-skilled immigration—an approach the gold card program could amplify.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the new system would include a $15,000 vetting fee per applicant and emphasized that background checks would be rigorous. Corporations may obtain multiple gold cards but will be limited to one person per card, he added.
Lutnick also argued that current green card holders typically earn less money than the average American, and insisted Trump wants to shift the immigration system toward higher-earning, highly skilled individuals. “So, same visas, but now just full of the best people,” Lutnick said.
Investor-based residency programs—often dubbed “golden visas”—are already common worldwide, including in countries such as the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Italy, Malta, Australia, and Canada.
Trump said the program represents an economic opportunity for the United States, asserting, “We’re getting somebody great coming into our country because we think these will be some tremendous people.” He specifically mentioned high-achieving graduates from China, India, and France as likely candidates for the new gold card.