Trump Commerce Secretary Makes Wild Claim About Selling U.S. Residency
The Trump administration is claiming that it’s made billions off its visa “gold card” program—even though the pay-to-play immigration alternative doesn’t exist yet.
Despite centering his campaign and presidency around deporting immigrants—documented or not—and limiting admission into the country, last month, Donald Trump pitched giving rich foreigners a new pathway to citizenship. The initiative, which the president has suggested calling the “Trump card,” would replace the EB-5 visa program.
Speaking with the All In podcast last week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed that the administration had made $5 billion by selling the EB-5 visa replacement for $5 million a pop.
“Yesterday I sold a thousand,” Lutnick said, saying that the program would launch in a couple of weeks and that Elon Musk was currently working on software to handle applications for the pricy legal papers.
Lutnick explained that American billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson was the brains behind the visa replacement, sharing the details of the “gold card” with Trump over the phone. Since the card does not actually exist yet, Lutnick’s claim (if true) means that people are willing to pay Trump $5 million a pop for little more than a promise.
But Lutnick’s blank explanation for the gold card came with a casual, dual warning for green card recipients.
“If you have a green card, which used to be a green card now a go-card, you’re a permanent resident of America. You can be a citizen, but you don’t have to be, and none of them are going to choose to be,” Lutnick said, completely fabricating the last point.
“They have the right to be an American, as long as they’re good people, and they’re vetted,” he said. “We can always take it away if they’re evil or mean or bad or something.”
Some green card holders, including Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, have already been forcibly detained and had their green cards canceled by the Department of Homeland Security after they dared to protest the actions of the U.S. government. Others, like 21-year-old Yunseo Chung, are still evading ICE’s deportation efforts despite being legal permanent residents.
“The idea is, if I was not American, and I lived in any other country, I would buy six—one for me, one for my wife, one for my four kids—because God forbid something happens, I want to be able to go to America and I want to have the right to go to the airport to go to America,” Lutnick said of the gold card, plainly restricting the terms that used to be available to all refugees seeking shelter in the U.S. to just the ultrawealthy denizens of the world. “I don’t want to hear that I can’t come here when there’s a horrible war, a horrible whatever.”
Critics of Trump’s “gold card” program have claimed that the new visa is yet another sign that Trump is willing to sell American democracy to the “highest bidder” and would allow America’s longtime adversaries—including Russian oligarchs—to effectively buy their way into the country.