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The man with the golden visa. President Donald Trump’s plan to help pay down the national debt by selling the “Trump Card” visa for $5 million each, which would secure green card privileges for those approved, has generated 70,000 signatures from interested parties.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been tasked with overseeing the “gold card” visa, as it is also known. To facilitate the process, he has launched the website TrumpCard.gov, where prospective applicants can get on a waitlist by providing relevant details.
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The online portal displays an image of the card, which features Trump’s portrait, signature, a photo of the Statue of Liberty, and a bald eagle, accompanied by the line “The Trump Card Is Coming.” Lutnick told the Financial Times that the card would be made of gold.
“It will be beautiful,” Lutnick told the FT. “Donald Trump appreciates these kinds of things. He cares about how it looks. He cares about how it feels. I mean, he deeply cares about that and thinks if you’re going to buy and make the investment in America, we should give you something that is beautiful.”
The idea for the high-priced card, according to Lutnick, came from billionaire hedge fund manager and Trump donor John Paulson as a way to help reduce the national debt. Trump embraced the idea, theorizing during a cabinet meeting in late February, “If we sell a million [gold cards], that’s $5 trillion. If we sell 10 million, which is possible … that’s $50 trillion,” Trump said.
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Immigration lawyers representing wealthy clients appear to concur with Trump’s speculation about the card’s potential demand.
“Five million dollars to these people is jet fuel cost. It means nothing to them,” Matthew Kolken, an immigration lawyer from Buffalo, New York, who represents Canadians interested in the Gold Card, told NPR.
“It allows them to potentially buy their way into the United States,” he said. “They would just be able to throw down their Amex Black Card.”
There appears to be a strong global demand, with immigration lawyers catering to their high-net-worth international clientele.
“I have one from India, one from Pakistan, and two from Egypt. And a colleague who has a few [clients] from Russia,” immigration attorney Mona Shah told NPR. Her clients are drawn to the gold card versus the green card or citizenship due to the speed of processing and its tax advantages, which allow recipients to be taxed only in the U.S. on their U.S. earnings.
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This is a notable difference for U.S. citizens and green card holders, who must report worldwide income on a U.S. tax return and pay U.S. taxes on all their income unless the country of their original citizenship has a tax treaty with the U.S.
“The Gold card is straight out capitalism at its height,” says Shah. “I think the founding fathers might roll over in their graves if they knew we were selling residency in this manner.”
An influx of wealthy new Golden Visa holders would also be a potential boon to luxury real estate but could send U.S. house prices even higher, creating an even greater disparity gap than currently exists if other countries’ similar high-priced visa plans are anything to go by.
The U.S. “would need to implement stringent regulations, such as clear limits on foreign investment in real estate, enhanced vetting processes to prevent money laundering and other illegal activities, and safeguards to ensure that the program’s benefits are shared with the local population,” U.N. representative Anoussa Salim told Newsweek when the Gold Card visa was first announced.
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This article Trump’s $5 Million ‘Gold Card’ Visa Draws 70,000 Applicants — Foreign Investors Target American Real Estate originally appeared on Benzinga.com