Fool’s Gold?

Making Sense of the Administration’s New “Gold Card”

The new Gold Card program is being sold as a fast-track, prestige path to U.S. permanent residency for the ultra-wealthy. In broad strokes, the program asks individual applicants to make a $1 million “gift” to the U.S. government. In return, they’re promised expedited lawful permanent residence via existing EB-1 or EB-2 categories. There is also a corporate version (around $2 million per sponsored employee) and talk of a future “Platinum” tier tied to tax advantages for those contributing $5 million.

The program is controversial. The program was created by an Executive Order, which instructs agencies to treat the $1 million gift as evidence that an applicant will “substantially benefit” the United States, fitting them into EB-1 or EB-2 immigrant categories. But U.S. immigration categories and quotas are set by statute, not by the president. Immigration scholars and even mainstream news outlets have already flagged the legal question: Can a president effectively create a de-facto new investor track by executive order without Congress amending the Immigration and Nationality Act? Several experts have suggested that any attempt to bypass statutory evidentiary standards or numerical caps will be overturned in court.

Apart from its dubious legal basis, most immigration advocates are scoffing at the premise of the program. There is already an investor program for foreign nationals, known as the EB-5, which requires an investment of $800,000 to $1,050,000 to qualify. The funds utilized for the EB-5 are a recoverable investment in the US economy; the funds paid for the “gold card” are explicitly a non-recoverable gift. If you go down this path, prepare to say goodbye forever to your $1 million. Given that there is already a more attractive visa option available to foreign investors, many government accountability advocates are concerned that this program will be a poorly-regulated way for foreign nationals to funnel large amounts of money into the government in order to curry favor with the administration.

There is no way to know at this point whether the “Gold Card” program will survive any level of legal scrutiny. For high wealth individuals looking to spend $1 million dollars on their immigration status, there are certainly other paths forward.