Details are still needed to judge President Donald Trump’s “gold card” immigration proposal. It is also worth saying that it should be made a reality with legislation, not executive action. In principle, however, it is thoroughly welcome. It is an immigration reform America needs, and it might unlock the president’s economic agenda, which has begun to hit bumps on Capitol Hill.
“We’re going to be selling a gold card,” Trump said from the Cabinet Room on Tuesday. “You have a green card. This is a gold card. We’re going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million, and that’s going to give you green card privileges, plus it’s going to be a route to citizenship. And wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card.”
The card will not only be available to wealthy people. Highly skilled people can also participate if they can find a sponsor. “Companies can buy gold cards and, in exchange, get those visas to hire new employees,” Trump said.
If the idea of selling access to the United States shocks you, you will probably be surprised to find out that this has been U.S. policy since Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990, creating the EB-5 program.
Through the original EB-5 program, foreign investors could get conditional green cards for themselves and their immediate family members if they spent $1,000,000 on a commercial enterprise creating at least 10 full-time jobs for existing U.S. citizens. Foreign investors had to prove the jobs were directly created by their investment and that they were involved in the day-to-day operation of the business. For certain “targeted employment areas,” the minimum investment was lowered to just $500,000.
Then, in 1992, Congress added a “Regional Center Program,” which allowed foreign investors to pool their money into entities approved by Citizenship and Immigration Services. The legislation also removed the day-to-day operational requirement and allowed “indirect” jobs to be counted for each investor. The Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the Marriott Convention Center Hotel in Washington, D.C., were both partially financed through the EB-5 program.
However, as successful as those two ventures turned out to be, they were the exception rather than the rule. Since its inception, the EB-5 program has been rife with fraud, as middlemen in the U.S. have bilked foreign investors, who often can’t speak English, let alone read it, and have never been to the U.S. The frauds amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars embezzled from investors in nonexistent projects.
Trump’s gold card plan would cut out middlemen by eliminating the EB-5 program, according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Instead of foreign investors sending at least $500,000 to unscreened hucksters, they would send $5,000,000 directly to the U.S. Treasury.
“They’ll have to go through vetting, of course,” Lutnick said while standing next to Trump on Tuesday. “To make sure they’re wonderful world-class citizens.”
Trump said the sale of gold cards would begin in two weeks, which would be a mistake. Congress created the EB-5 program, and if Trump wants to eliminate it, which is a good idea, and create a new visa program, he needs a new act of Congress.
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Fortunately, as Trump noted, gold cards could be a boon to the federal treasury. There are only 10,000 EB-5 visas granted each year, but if Trump could get Congress to bump the gold card cap to 100,000 a year — a million green cards are issued every year at present — they would bring in $500 billion in annual revenue, or $5 trillion over 10 years.
Republicans in Congress are trying to find a way to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent without increasing the deficit. Trump’s gold card could be the answer they seek.
