President Donald Trump wants his “Gold Card” visa to help raise funds for the government by selling green cards to foreign graduates of U.S. colleges who are trying to get into top jobs.
“We have developed in great detail, what we are calling the Gold Card, which goes on sale very, very soon for $5 million,” he told Congress in his speech to the Joint Session of Congress. He continued:
We will allow the most successful, job-creating people from all over the world to buy a path to U.S. citizenship. It’s like the green card but better and more sophisticated. And these people will have to pay tax in our country. They won’t have to pay tax from where they came … but they have to pay tax [and] create jobs.
The cards will help foreign graduates stay in the United States instead of going home, he said:
We can keep them in our country instead of having them being forced out … and not being allowed to stay and create tremendous numbers of jobs and great success for a company out there.
So while we take out the criminals, killers, traffickers and child predators who are allowed to enter our country under the open border policy of these people — the Democrats, a Biden administration, the open border, insane policies that you’ve allowed to destroy our country — we will now bring in brilliant, hard-working, job-creating people.
They’re going to pay a lot of money, and we’re going to reduce our debt with that money.
The proposals may not work because there are many cheaper routes to citizenship for wealthy foreigners and foreign students.
Also, Congress controls the distribution of green cards and citizenship. In Congress, most Democrats and many Republicans will likely oppose the Gold Card plan for different reasons — unless Trump is willing to give them a political prize in return.
But Trump’s Gold Card also gives him a zig-zag route between his rival business supporters and immigration reformers.
His business supporters support the counterproductive H-1B visa program that has imported a huge cohort of Indian middle managers and workers into Fortune 500 companies. Many Americans and foreign workers say that foreign managers are wrecking innovation and productivity by firing innovative U.S. professionals to sell their jobs to unproductive co-ethnic migrants in exchange for kickbacks.
Outside Washington, millions of American graduates and voters, as well as migration experts, oppose Trump’s proposal to sell slices of Americans’ citizenship and access to Fortune 500 jobs to foreigners.
The issue is politically important because college graduate voters may be an important bloc in the 2026 midterm election.
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