- President Trump announced a new “gold card” immigration plan, allowing wealthy individuals to buy U.S. residency and a pathway to citizenship for $5 million, with hopes of using the revenue to pay off America’s $36 trillion national debt. The plan, which would replace the EB-5 visa program, aims to attract high-net-worth individuals and companies while offering tax benefits, though details are slim.
President Donald Trump believes he can pay off America’s $36 trillion national debt by charging rich immigrants $5 million for a gold card—which has green card privileges “plus a route to citizenship.”
President Trump made the impromptu announcement in the Oval Office yesterday, telling reporters: “Remember the words ‘gold card.’”
The president said he had planned to make the announcement next week but seized the opportunity to share the news while signing executive orders on Tuesday.
As a result, details of what the gold card will entail are still sparse, but the Republican politician said: “Wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people.
“We think it’s going to be extremely successful, and [it’s] never been done before or anything like this—but it’s something that we’re going to be putting out over the next week ... two weeks.”
The gold card would replace America’s existing EB-5 visa program, which requires foreign investors to pledge $1,050,000 in capital to an existing commercial enterprise plus an additional $800,000 for targeted areas of employment.
The new, more expensive, gold card program would attract “wonderful world-class global citizens,” said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, adding that individuals who purchased the card would still have to go through a vetting process.
President Trump said he also envisioned companies buying the cards in order to retain talented individuals, explaining: “Companies will pay to get people in. Since today you graduate from the Wharton School of Finance, or Harvard, or Stanford, or any college, and nobody knows if you can even go and work for a company.
“All these companies that want to get people to be working for them will be able to buy a card ... for the people that are number one in that class at top schools.”
The president added that high-net-worth individuals who purchased gold cards would not have to pay tax in the U.S. on income accumulated outside of the States, but will “pay full taxes like everybody else” on investments within the country.
Paying off national debt
With a price tag of $20 million to purchase gold cards for a family of four, President Trump says he’s taking aim at a key issue facing the American economy: national debt.
Currently Uncle Sam’s debts total more than $36.2 trillion, though the metric which has the likes of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon concerned is America’s debt-to-GDP ratio.
This represents the amount America owes versus the output of the economy, and hence whether it is generating enough income to repay its debt.
The Penn Wharton Budget Model, which calculates the affordability of America’s debt burden, estimates that between 2040 and 2045 the debt-GDP ratio will hit between 175% and 200% under current policy.
This, in turn, could prompt what economists have called a “market rebellion,” when purchasers of the debt fear they will never be repaid and bid up the interest rates the U.S. pays on the debt—or stop buying the debt at all.
The president seems to think he can avert this potential crisis entirely with gold cards, saying: “A million cards would be worth $5 trillion, and if you sell 10 million of the cards that’s a total of $50 trillion. Well, we have $35 trillion in debt, so that would be nice.”
He noted that he would have $15 trillion “left over” if he managed to sell 10 million cards, adding: “It may be earmarked for deficit reduction, but it actually could be more money than that.”
Is the plan realistic?
If America were to welcome an influx of high-paying immigrants it would certainly mark a change from green card policy over the past few years.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found that in 2024 the number of green cards was capped at around 1.1 million compared with a total applicant pool of 35 million.
This means the vast majority—97%—of applicants are still waiting on their permanent documents, a pool potentially containing some individuals desperate enough to fork out seven figures for some closure.
However, for Trump to hit the 10 million benchmark he would need to attract nearly half the world’s millionaire population to purchase a card—and the majority are already in the U.S.
According to a Capgemini study released last year, there were 22.8 million millionaires across the globe in 2023—an increase of 5.1% from the year prior.
Yet 7.43 million of those high-net-worth individuals are already U.S. citizens, meaning the White House would have to attract the vast majority of remaining millionaires. On top of that, to buy a gold card mere millionaire status is not enough—one person would need to be worth at least $5 million.
While the number of people worth $5 million or more is growing—up 52.9% over the past decade according to a study from Patriotic Millionaires, the Institute for Policy Studies, Fight Inequality Alliance, and Oxfam—there are hundreds of thousands, but not tens of millions, of people with this level of wealth.
France, for example, is home to 122,000 people worth $5 million–plus; Brazil, 62,000; Australia, 85,000; and India, 81,000.
Again, the Oval Office faces the snag that a significant proportion of those with means to buy a gold card are already in the States, with 1.5 million U.S. residents reporting a net worth upwards of $5 million.
