Get Your Gold Card Now — For Only $5 Million!

But what if current U.S. citizens could sell their citizenship for $5 million?

There is so much about the looting of America to think and write about right now that it’s become utterly overwhelming. (And isn’t that the point? To push sane people to the brink?) So for today, I’m going to write about something more in my wheelhouse, which is immigration.

You have probably already heard that Donald Trump is proposing a new way to attract wealthy immigrants to the United States. Currently, permanent residency is colloquially referred to as getting a “green card” (because historically, the actual card an immigrant received upon being granted permanent residence was green, though that is no longer the case). Now, Trump would like to offer a fast track to permanent residency for wealthy immigrants. He’s calling it a Gold Card.

Details are sparse, but in short the program would allow foreign nationals to obtain permanent residence in return for payment of $5 million. The idea is to replace the current investor visa, which offers permanent residence in return for an investment of $1.05 million (or $800,000 in areas with high unemployment rates) in an existing or new business that creates at least 10 jobs for U.S. workers. This program is known as the EB-5 program (as the provisions for this program are part of the fifth employment-based category for immigrant visas as set out in the Immigration and Nationality Act).

In addition to the important job creation requirement, a key component of the EB-5 program is that applicants must provide evidence that the source of their funds is legal (to avoid having the EB-5 program used as a vehicle for money laundering). So far, there has been no suggestion that the Gold Card program would include either job creation or safeguards with respect to the source of the requisite $5 million. It’s not even clear where that $5 million would go. Directly into the U.S. Treasury? Into some kind of presidential slush discretionary fund?

Trump has not indicated whether he intends to launch the Gold Card program via Executive Order, or by amending the relevant federal regulations. Either of those methods would almost certainly be challenged in court. Because the EB-5 program was created by Congress, only Congress has the ability to get rid of it or replace it by amending the Immigration and Nationality Act. Similarly, only Congress has the power to allocate visas.

I stumbled on an interesting take on the Gold Card program by a pundit named Shahid Bolsen:

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Bolsen says:

[Trump] is offering residency, and a path to citizenship, for five million dollars. This is not an immigration policy, it’s a fire sale. Citizenship is just another product on the shelf. I mean, why not tweak that program — allow Americans to sell their citizenship for five million dollars? Now that makes sense. Let struggling Americans get paid, and move out of that country with their newfound millions…. Ask yourself, if you’re an American, what would you rather have? American citizenship, or five million dollars? Five million dollars, and the opportunity to get citizenship elsewhere, and have all the safety and all the security that comes with being that rich.

He makes the point that African Americans in particular might be especially amenable to taking advantage of this program, as “they have the most obvious reasons for being interested in selling their citizenship, since they don’t get much out of it in the first place.”

Bolsen goes on to say:

I think you ought to demand the right to sell your citizenship, since [Trump is] already treating it like an asset that can be bought and sold. So why can’t the people who already possess that asset, who already have that product … why can’t they sell it? Isn’t that capitalism? Isn’t that the free market? Forget about selling it. If American citizenship is worth five million dollars, shouldn’t we be entitled to a refund? … I don’t know about you, but I sure never got five million dollars worth of value for my citizenship. Did you? I think the government ought to buy it back, just like corporations with their share buybacks and so on.

I think the point is well taken that the Trump administration is treating U.S. citizenship like an asset that can be bought and sold. This is how the administration is approaching many things, like federal properties the administration hopes to sell.

There are a number of so-called “golden visa” programs around the world. For amounts typically between $250,000 and $500,000, it is possible to obtain legal residency, and usually a path to citizenship as well, in countries including Ireland, Italy, Greece, Malta, Portugal and Spain — although some countries are tightening or eliminating such programs. And some countries are currently considering the introduction of such programs to attract the very wealthy, including Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Other countries offer permanent residence to people who can show they have passive income (such as pension income) as low as, for example, $2,000 per month in the Dominican Republic, and $7,100 per month in Mexico.

The question, of course, is whether it’s a good idea to put U.S. residency (and eventually citizenship) up for sale. But I’d expect nothing less from a president that views the world from a purely transactional perspective.