President Donald Trump on Tuesday said a $5 million “gold card” would go on sale “very, very soon” and would serve as a new path towards becoming a U.S. citizen.
“Its like the green card, but better and more sophisticated,” Trump said. “And these people will have to pay tax in our country.”
Trump said the newest path to citizenship “will allow the most successful job creating people from all over the world to buy a path to U.S. citizenship.”
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The “gold card” visa will also enable wealthier students to obtain permanent residency in the U.S.
Trump has previously touted his plan before to attract the world’s wealthiest to become U.S. citizens, though it comes at a time when he is both clamping down on illegal migration and as universities are increasingly in the spotlight amid soaring school costs and crippling student loans.
Trump announced last week that he expected the newest visa option would go on sale in the coming weeks.
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Details of the newest visa remain unclear, but Trump said it was just one of his plans to revamp U.S. immigration policies.
Following Trump’s announcement earlier this month, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, Lora Ries, warned it could invite fraud.
“Any immigration benefit draws fraud … people are willing to do anything and say just about anything to come to the U.S.,” Ries told Fox News Digital.
While Ries acknowledged the goals behind the program, she expressed skepticism that all applicants could be vetted to the extent needed to prevent the type of fraud that exists in the similar EB-5 visa program, which Trump’s gold card would replace.
“Fraud is rarely detected, let alone enforced … so it’s low risk, high reward to commit immigration benefit fraud,” Ries said, adding that even Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick admitted to the widespread fraud plaguing the EB-5 program.
“So the question is: How is this going to be different,” Ries said. “It raised the price from a million to 5 million, but how are we going to prevent the fraud? Are you just inviting wealthier fraudsters and corrupt people to exploit this?”
