Trump launches $1M visa ‘gold card’ program.
He said all program funds go to the U.S. government, predicting billions for a Treasury account to benefit the country.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday (December 10, 2025) formally unveiled what he has long described as one of the signature immigration-and-investment initiatives of his second term: the “gold card” programme, a scheme that promises legal residency and a future pathway to U.S. citizenship for those willing—and able—to make a substantial financial commitment to the United States. With the announcement, Trump moved a major campaign pledge into action, turning a concept that had floated around political speeches for years into an operational system with an official application portal.
Standing in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, surrounded by prominent business leaders, administration officials, and representatives from the technology and real-estate sectors, Trump declared the gold card “open for purchase.” Unlike the often slow-moving and bureaucratically burdened visa programmes of the past, he emphasized that this system would be “fast, efficient, transparent, and beneficial to the American taxpayer.” The programme, he said, would usher in a “new era” of investment-driven immigration—one that costs the federal government nothing, but potentially injects billions into national coffers.
The structure of the gold card programme is straightforward but steep. For an individual applicant, the price is set at $1 million, a figure that includes processing, background checks, and an initial period of legal residency that can eventually lead to citizenship. For corporations, the fee is even higher—$2 million per foreign-born employee they wish to sponsor. Administration officials say the business-tier pricing was deliberately set to discourage mass corporate purchasing while still offering a clear, legal pathway for companies that genuinely need international talent.
Trump stressed that every cent paid into the programme would go “directly to the U.S. government,” not private intermediaries or third-party administrators. He predicted that the initiative would quickly become a major generator of federal revenue. “We’re talking about billions flowing into the Treasury,” the president said, adding that the funds would be deposited into a dedicated government account managed by the Treasury Department. From there, he said, the money could be used “to do things positive for the country”—a broad phrase that administration officials later suggested could include infrastructure, border security, community redevelopment projects, or debt reduction.
The gold card is effectively positioned as a replacement for the long-standing EB-5 visa programme, a system created by Congress in 1990 with the goal of attracting foreign investment and stimulating job creation. Under EB-5 rules, applicants typically invest around $1 million—or a lower amount in targeted areas—into a business expected to employ at least 10 American workers. While EB-5 has brought in billions of dollars over three decades, it has also been marred by long backlogs, allegations of fraud, and disputes about whether the investments truly benefited the areas Congress intended.
By contrast, Trump’s gold card requires no job-creation mandate, no specification of where the funds must flow, and no multi-year investment monitoring process. Administration officials argue that this simplicity will make the programme more appealing and far easier to administer. Critics, however, have already raised questions about whether abandoning job-creation requirements undermines the original purpose behind investor visas.
Supporters of the new plan contend that the gold card system will appeal particularly to high-net-worth individuals, entrepreneurs, international students seeking a permanent future in the U.S., and companies that struggle to secure highly skilled workers under traditional visa caps. By tying the programme directly to federal revenue, they argue, Trump has reframed immigration not as a cost but as a financial benefit to the nation.
The website accepting applications reportedly experienced heavy traffic within minutes of the announcement, with early visitors from India, China, the Middle East, and parts of Europe. Administration officials said the platform includes clear instructions, eligibility guidelines, and a streamlined digital verification process.
For now, the gold card represents one of the most dramatic shifts in U.S. immigration policy in recent years—part political statement, part economic experiment, and part invitation to global investors. Whether it becomes a transformative new system or simply the latest chapter in America’s long, complicated immigration history remains to be seen. But with the programme now officially live, the White House is betting that the world’s wealthiest individuals will see the value in buying not just legal entry into the United States, but a long-term stake in its future.