John Jefferson
President Donald Trump’s plan to offer a “gold card” visa to wealthy immigrants is similar to policies in use in more than three dozen countries, although the U.S. proposal would come with the highest price tag, an expert tells Fox News Digital.
“What you’re doing is you’re bringing in wealthier individuals, clearly job creators, consumers,” Anthony Esposito, the Founder & CEO of Island Capital Investments, told Fox News Digital.
Esposito’s comments come after Trump said Tuesday that he planned to offer a “gold card” visa that gives recipients a path to U.S. citizenship for $5 million, telling reporters such a program would be “extremely successful.”
“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, and we think it’s going to be extremely successful,” Trump said Tuesday from the Oval Office, according to a report from the Associated Press.
TRUMP TO INTRODUCE ‘GOLD CARD’ VISA FOR WEALTHY INVESTORS WITH $5 MILLION PRICE TAG: ‘ROUTE TO CITIZENSHIP’
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that the new gold card would replace the current EB-5 Immigrant Investor visa program within two weeks, a program that was created by Congress in 1990 and offers residency to people who spent about $1 million on a business while employing at least 10 people, the report notes.
Trump has also touted the program as a way of trimming the national debt.
“It’s the exact opposite of the Biden administration’s policy. On one side of the curve we had the mass migrations of unvetted, undocumented immigrants coming in the southern border that were essentially living on the taxpayer dime[.]”
“Companies can go and buy a gold card, and they can use it as a matter of recruitment,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “At the same time, the company is using that money to pay down debt. We’re going to pay down a lot of debt with that.”
Esposito shares Trump’s view for how the money can be used, noting that 1 million gold card recipients would result in $5 trillion for the U.S. Treasury.
“A million individuals coming in would be $5 trillion in payment to the government, off the bat, that doesn’t include the derivative growth of those individuals being here,” Esposito said.
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Nearly 40 other countries have similar so-called “citizenship by investment” programs, according to Henley & Partners, a law firm who represents clients looking to use such arrangements. However, the U.S. investment of $5 million proposed by Trump would make the United States the most expensive of the group.
Esposito believes allowing such investments would benefit the U.S. economy.
“It is the greatest nation in the world. It is the greatest economy in the world. This is just simply a way of vetting people and having people come in that will create a mutually beneficial relationship…”
“The job growth, the job creation, the taxes paid, the consumer spending, 10 million cards would be $50 trillion. The numbers are real walking in, and the numbers are real as of derivative benefits of these individuals being here,” Esposito said.
While some critics have expressed fears that the program could be abused or lead to threats to national security, Esposito argued that the Trump administration should be trusted to put the right vetting procedures in place.
“It’s the exact opposite of the Biden administration’s policy. On one side of the curve, we had the mass migrations of unvetted, undocumented immigrants coming in the southern border that were essentially living on the taxpayer dime,” Esposito said, adding that Trump’s policy would call for “a program where we have fully vetted the individuals on a personal basis and on an economic basis.”
Ultimately, Esposito says, Trump’s program will cause a “mutually beneficial” partnership between the U.S. and gold card holders.
“It is the greatest nation in the world. It is the greatest economy in the world,” Esposito said. “This is just simply a way of vetting people and having people come in that will create a mutually beneficial relationship between the United States, and the United States economy, and those gold card holders.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.
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