President Donald Trump watched a plan on Tuesday to launch a 'Gold Card' program for rich immigrants who wanted to work in the United States, and even to offer them a way to citizenship when they qualified.
The president said that the card would replace the current EB-2 visa program and cost around $ 5 million dollars per person.
'We are going to sell a golden card. You have a green card. This is a golden card, “Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
He described the new 'Gold Card' program as 'Green Card Privileges Plus' that recipients would offer a 'route to citizenship' in the United States.
“They will be rich and they will be successful, and they will spend a lot of money and pay a lot of taxes and hire a lot of people, and we think it will be extremely successful,” he said, brag that it has never been before done'.
He viewed the program as ready to launch in 'two weeks'.
United States Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said that the 'Gold Card' program would replace the current EB-5 Visa program that he criticized was 'full of nonsense and make-beta and fraud'.
“We're going to end the EB-5 program and we're going to replace it with the Trump Gold Card,” said Lutnick.
US President Donald Trump speaks with reporters together with Secretary Howard Lutnick
He said that the recipients of the gold card would be fully screened.
“We're going to make sure that they are world -class world citizens,” he added.
Lutnick added that the steep reimbursement of the gold card would help reduce the federal deficit.
He said that 'golden cards' would not be spread by a lottery system, which is currently part of the visa distribution.
“You get large taxpayers, large job producers, and we can perhaps sell a million of these cards, perhaps more than that,” Trump said.
He predicted that the program could yield up to $ 55 trillion in income if it became a popular solution for foreign investments.
“It can be great, maybe it will be fantastic,” Trump said.
He said that the visa programs should be more advanced to ensure that the United States earned money.
“Why would we give them away?” he asked.
