WASHINGTON — President Trump introduced Tuesday that the US authorities will quickly start promoting $5 million “gold cards” that convey each green-card residency standing and a path to American citizenship to foreigners — predicting 1 million playing cards shall be offered and saying the initiative may rapidly pay down the nationwide debt.
“It’s somewhat like a green card, but at a higher level of sophistication. It’s a road to citizenship for people, and essentially people of wealth or people of great talent,” Trump stated within the Oval Workplace.
“We’re going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million and that’s going to give you green card privileges-plus,” the president added as he rolled out the plan to a bunch of journalists.
“They’ll be wealthy and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people.”
Trump claimed that the initiative had been accepted by administration legal professionals and can launch in roughly “two weeks.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, showing alongside Trump, stated this system might be a extra profitable model of the EB-5 visa initiative, established by laws in 1990 which granted sure traders a inexperienced card in the event that they meet sure standards.
“Rather than having this sort of ridiculous EB-5 program, we’re going to end the EB-5 program. We’re going to replace it with the Trump Gold Card, which is really a green card,” Lutnick stated.
“They’ll be able to pay $5 million to the US government. They’ll have to go through vetting, of course, to make sure they’re wonderful world-class global citizens.”
Trump stated that he believed everybody from Russian oligarchs to Indian tech entrepreneurs would pay for the playing cards.
“Apple and all these companies that want to get people to be working for them will be able to buy a card, and for the people that are number one in their class at top schools, I see that as one of the things,” Trump stated.
“But generally speaking, it will be people with money and people that create jobs, and they won’t have to pay any tax on income outside of the United States, which they’re not paying right now. They’re not citizens, but they’ll have to pay if they create jobs in the United States, they’ll pay full taxes like everybody else.”
Trump predicted “we’ll be able to sell maybe a million of these cards, maybe more than that. And if you add up the numbers, they’re pretty good.”
“As an example, a million cards would be worth $5 trillion,” he went on. “And if you sell 10 million of the cards, that’s a total of $50 trillion well, We have $35 trillion in debt. That’d be nice, so we’ll see.”
The president insisted that his administration has “it all worked out from the legal standpoint, it’s totally legal to do.”
“It’s a path to citizenship, a very strong path to citizenship, but we’re [granting] citizenship for that, I’d have to get Congress.”
Requested particularly if Russian oligarchs, who usually attained their wealth via corruption, could be eligible, Trump stated: “Yeah, probably. I do know some Russian oligarchs which can be very good individuals.
“It’s possible. They’re not as wealthy as they used to be. I think they can afford $5 million.”
