President Donald Trump It continues to promote “gold card” visas that allow foreigners to buy the road to the US, replacing them with a controversial visa scheme that has been suffering for years due to concerns about potential abuse by China.
Trump once again promoted his plan for the Gold Card.
“I believe that Apple and all these companies that can't get people to come out of college and come because they get thrown out, I think of it, you graduate number one at the Wharton School of Finance or Harvard or Stanford, and you get thrown out of the country. You can't stay more than one day. And they want to hire these people, but they can't. They've complained to me about it. Now they can buy a gold card, and they can take that gold card and Make it a part of their deal to win these top students,” Trump said Sunday.
“You're going to be a lot of companies buying gold cards, so if we sell a lot of them now for $5 million, then if we sell a lot of them, then if we add that together, it's a lot of money,” he said.
Trump promotes $5 million “gold card” as a new path to citizenship
Then President Donald Trump smiles at the Turning Point USA American Fest held at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix on December 22, 2024. (Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)
Host Maria Bartilomo asked Trump about his concerns that Chinese people might exploit it.
“They may or may be that, but they don't need to do that. They can do that in other ways,” Trump said.
Visas will replace the EB-5 Investor Visa Program. The program was founded in the 1990s and normally requires an investment of $1 million, but it is as low as $500,000 in areas classified as high poverty and requires at least 10 jobs to be created.
Efforts to reform the program were failing in both the Obama and Trump administrations amid concerns that the program was being used by the Chinese Communist Party.
“While the EB-5 program's goal of stimulating capital investment and job creation in the United States is commendable, it has become clear in recent years that CCPs may be abusing the program to access permanent residency of U.S. members,” a Republican on the House Judiciary Committee said in 2020.
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They cited statistics showing that between 2012 and 2018, 80% of the visas of nearly 10,000 people were handed over to Chinese-born investors, and that the majority of backlog investors are Chinese.
It also included the creation of a “regional centre” that pooled visa money and funded large investments across the country. It aims to promote growth in poor areas and rural areas, but using regional map drawings around certain poor pockets, it sent money to high-end projects in places like New York and San Francisco.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is working on the opening ceremony of the fall semester at the Chinese Communist Party School in Beijing. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Li Tao)
Bipartisan attempts to reform the program were blocked in 2021, with program funding expired. That was later Revived in 2022 With reforms introduced by R-Iowa, Chuck Grassley sess and D-Vt's Patrick Leahy.
The reform was intended to tackle fraud and included more stringent definitions of terms such as auditing EB-5 projects, background checks, visiting sites, and “capital” to prevent abuse. It also raised the level of funding required for highly poverty areas to $800,000. Of the 10,000 EB-5s made available each year, 2,000 are allocated to rural or highly poor areas.
The provisions also include ensuring that an increase in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authority to review foreign capital is legally procured and require foreign agents and third-party promoters of the program to register with the DHS.
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However, EB-5 continues to draw criticism, with some immigrant Hawks saying it won't solve the basic problems of the program. Commerce Chief Secretary Howard Lutnick recently described the program as “inadequately oversighted and inadequate executions.”
Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation's Border Guard and Immigration Centre, shared these concerns about the EB-5.
“With the US immigration benefits, when you provide it, they come and fraudulently seek or use benefits. The EB-5 Investor Visa Program is no exception. It's an example of fraud that Ludnik sees as erroneous job creation claims, Bogus projects and pyramid investment claims,” he said.
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“Aliens view immigration benefit fraud as low-risk, high pay, not to mention that it is rarely investigated and punished. This is one of the reasons there are over 9 million immigration benefits applications pending at DHS and nearly 4 million immigration cases pending at DOJ,” she said.
“It is important to scrutinize the current backlog for immigration benefits fraud, deny those cases and deport foreign applicants.
