Under the program, individual applicants pay a non-refundable $15,000 processing fee to the Department of Homeland Security. Once background checks are cleared, they must make a $1 million unrestricted contribution directly to the Department of Commerce. Corporations can sponsor an employee for $2 million. Approved applicants receive lawful permanent resident status (a green card) on an accelerated timeline—typically within weeks—under the EB-1 (extraordinary ability) or EB-2 (advanced degree/exceptional ability) categories, bypassing years-long queues.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who designed the initiative, emphasized that every applicant will undergo “the best vetting the government has ever done,” including full FBI, DHS, and interagency security reviews. Recipients are eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship after five years of continuous residence, just like any other green-card holder.
A separate “Trump Platinum Card” is already in development. For a $5 million contribution plus the standard processing fee, it would allow approved foreign nationals to spend up to 270 days per year in the United States without being taxed on their worldwide income—a tax benefit not available to ordinary residents or citizens. The Platinum version does not include a path to citizenship and is still awaiting congressional approval for its special tax treatment.
Trump framed the program as both an economic boon and a talent-retention tool. He noted that top graduates from Stanford, MIT, and other elite universities—often foreign students who finish first in their class—currently have no guaranteed way to remain in the country after graduation. “They go back to their countries and compete against us,” he said, citing direct conversations with Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives who lose talent to Canada, Australia, and Europe.
The administration projects the Gold Card could generate tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars for the Treasury over the next decade, money that officials say will help reduce the national debt. Unlike the existing EB-5 investor visa, which requires a minimum investment of $800,000–$1.05 million that must create at least ten American jobs, the Gold Card treats the payment as a direct gift to the government with no job-creation requirement.
The launch has ignited fierce debate. Immigration advocates and legal scholars immediately condemned it as the overt sale of American residency and citizenship—the first program in U.S. history to tie immigration status so explicitly to personal wealth. Critics argue that it violates the constitutional principle that Congress, not the president, holds plenary authority over immigration and naturalization. By bypassing statutory visa caps and traditional merit criteria, they say, the executive branch is effectively creating a new immigration category without legislative approval.
Democratic leaders and some Republican lawmakers warned that the program could open the door to Russian oligarchs, corrupt officials, and cartel-linked figures, regardless of how rigorous the vetting claims to be. Others called it hypocritical: while the administration conducts the largest mass-deportation operation in decades and imposes strict travel bans on poorer nations, it is simultaneously rolling out the red carpet for multimillionaires.
Supporters, primarily in the technology and business communities, praise the initiative as a pragmatic fix to a broken system. They point out that the United States already has an investor visa (EB-5) and that dozens of countries—including Canada, the United Kingdom, Portugal, and Malta—offer similar “golden visa” programs. Tech executives argue that America risks falling behind if it cannot compete for global talent.
Within hours of the announcement, the application website experienced heavy traffic and briefly crashed. Early demand appears strong, particularly from high-net-worth individuals in China, India, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Legal challenges are expected as soon as this week. Immigration-law experts predict lawsuits alleging that the program exceeds executive authority, misuses existing visa categories, and violates equal-protection principles. A future administration could also revoke or restrict Gold Card statuses, creating uncertainty for participants.
For now, the Trump Gold Card stands as the most expensive—and fastest—official route ever created to obtain an American green card, crystallizing a starkly transactional vision of immigration at a time when the administration is simultaneously closing the door to millions of lower-income and undocumented migrants.
