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Another spicy new idea from the Trump administration: Gold Cards!
The idea, as I understand it, is that global citizens will be able to pay a one time fee of $5 million USD, and enjoy a much shorter and less strenuous vetting process to become U.S. citizens. The gold card will effectively function like a green card that is paid for.
In the hearing they mention they want to use this money to pay down the deficit, which I actually think is a great idea. I'm sure it will filter for much higher quality immigration than our current setup of mostly illegal immigrants, anyway.
I'm sure the left will hate this and see it as privileging the rich. And to be clear, it absolutely is! It's extremely unfair for people who want to immigrate and don't have the funds, will never even possibly have the funds, to pay $5m USD. That being said, I like the idea because it very much singles the U.S. shifting towards wanting immigrants who actually pull their weight, and provide something to the country.
While yes of course not all rich people will be a net benefit to the country, by and large I would have to imagine if they can apy 5 million dollars they will be relatively high quality. Plus, as Trump points out, this will massively incentivize people to move their businesses to the U.S. You're a wealthy founder in China, Europe, or Latin America? Just buy a gold card and move your business over!
Anyway, I know we have a lot of libertarians here so I'm curious for thoughts on this? I was personally quite surprised he went ahead and did it - didn't even know this was on the table.
I thought it was a great idea before I learned it's replacing the EB-5, which requires investing about a million dollars in something in the United States, with something that has a much higher fee. So even if it has a lot less process (which is an important thing to reduce - a flat fee's very plausibly better than an investment requirement because of the friction of measuring it) I think it will, in effect, reduce the number of extremely skilled immigrants.
I think this is a good lesson that interpreting politics based on headlines and popular tweets isn't great! A lot more people read a tweet, matched it to something they already thought was good, and were like "wow ... great idea"! But the devil's in the details, or at least the second sentence of the article body. Oh well
It should replace h1b and the cost should be closer to 1.5 or 2 million. Banks can finance them, with the citizenship as collateral. Don't make your payments? We'll sell your house and put you on the next flight to Hyderabad. Those who are so incredibly talented that the US can't live without them will have an easy time getting financing. They'll clear 300k a year no problem here and pay it off in no time.
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I dislike it for the same reason I dislike drastic changes in general.
It's supposed to replace the existing EB-5. Stable regulatory environments are central to being considered business-friendly. People plan their business around the stability of the EB-5. Drastic changes to the regulatory environment does permanent damage to a nation's perception as being business worthy. Now, the US has a big dick, oodles of goodwill and a strong precedent of stability. So these changes may not cause visible damage in the short term. But, it accelerates the long-term cultural shift away from the US and towards the Indo-Pacific. These changes take decades, but their impact can be felt immediately in the aftermath of trigger events. Covid was one such example.
Secondly, I'm not sure it will have takers. Around the world, there are around 400k (UHNWI) Ultra-high-net worth-individuals. (People with more than $30 million). Americans, Chinese and Europeans constitute a majority of them. Americans and Europeans don't want a new passport & are at war with China. That leaves about 50k people in the rest of the world, who would want the Gold Card. Most Gold-card/EB-5 equivalents are investment visas. Looking at the announcement, the $5 million seems to be a direct spend instead of an investment. That's a lot of money down the drain, and rich people don't throw money down the drain. Why wouldn't someone get a citizenship for EU nation or Canada instead ?
Overall, it's a great option if the EB-5 coexists alongside it. Terrible if it replaces the EB-5.
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Is there any downside to this idea?
It's a great idea. The downside is just that it replaces the EB-5, a similar program with a lower cost, which probably makes it net negative for the stated goal.
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I have seen people on data secrets lox complaining that we'll importing a ruling class of foreign rich people to push Americans down a peg. But personally at that price I don't see it being an issue.
If it isn't inflation-pegged... could become an issue in the future.
It should be in gold, not dollars.
That's about 80kg at today's prices, or approximately 1700 troy ounces.
Just round it up: 1776 ty oz of gold can buy you citizenship in the USA. Today's price puts that at $5.2 million.
This is beautiful. However, it doesn't account for the collapse in the price of gold when Elon Musk takes a spaceship to Psyche 16 and flies it back with 100 quintillion USD worth of gold. We'll be using it as paperweights by the end.
It would be safer to peg it to a basket of goods.
Which goods, exactly? Other precious metals such as platinum? Foodstuffs like corn and pork? Livestock, such as cows and goats and sheep? Manufactured goods? Cotton, linen, silk, or wool? Does it have to be spun? Does it have to be woven, or knit? Cars, televisions, sewing machines? Or does it need to be chips? What about optics, can I buy my citizenship with monocles and telescopes?
I'd rather peg it to gold and platinum only than some nebulous basket, and the only reason I'm including platinum is because it's only possible to fake the density with more expensive and rare elements like iridium.
I think with six years of lead time we could foresee the impact and adjust, which would still be better than a basket.
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Give that the US federal budget deficit is 2_000_000_000_000 dollars, they have to sell what, 400_000 gold cards each year before they can start paying down the accumulated debt?
Why not just start a Trump Diversity Lottery instead of the regular DV lottery? You sell twenty million tickets for 100 dollars each, anyone can buy as many tickets as they want, fifty thousand winners get their green cards.
Trump said he plans to sell a million of them. Might be possible, idk!
“The number of centi-millionaires ($100 million net worth) in the world has more than doubled in the last 20 years and now stands at 28,420”
Companies will also be able to buy them to bring in talent from other countries easily. I'd imagine a good chunk would be bought by them.
I have a hard time believing that anyone a company would pay $5M to obtain a visa for couldn't obtain a visa some other, cheaper way.
Or just facilitate some sort of remote work arrangement with occasional site visits for that much.
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This has been a relatively popular idea in wonky libertarian circles for while.
Although the proposals I've seen are that you have a flat and relatively low tariff for every single immigrant (e.g. $50,000 and a background check and you can become a US citizen), with borrowing schemes available. The main ideas is that a) a lot of people are paying coyotes and such high fees anyway, so better the US government collect this income and b) it alleviates a lot of the concerns of immigrants being a "drain" on the US. ($50,000 is just an example, it could be considerably higher ot lower).
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As a replacement for the existing EB-5 it seems reasonable, sure. $5m is a better threshold. As long as rich Americans are taxed worldwide, though, it will mainly continue to be a thing for rich parents to buy their kids who are too dumb/lazy to just take the postgrad visa -> work visa -> green card route, or who come from a country where that takes a very long time.
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I think it's a cool idea, but it's not competitive. There's far cheaper visas in far nicer places with far better taxes for people who are this rich. Though the US is a unique and exceptional place in the world for many reasons, so it works as an option if you really want to get in I suppose.
From a political standpoint it's probably the right move, nobody's really going to complain that foreign multi-millionaires are replacing them, and you simplify the process compared to the cheaper but administrative quagmire of EB-5.
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That's funny because I would presume they're drug kingpins, grifters and mafiosos.
You underestimate how paranoid most visa programs are about source of funds. It's not like Jorge de Guzman can just show up with a sack of cash and get residency, especially given the sum.
If they're mafiosos, they'll buy this with funds that are so washed they're basically indistinguishable from honest businessmen. You'd be stupid to do anything else.
If this was "buy property worth 5M in the US" it'd be another story, but if this is a direct cash payment to the Feds, you bet your ass they're going to look into it.
If you insist.
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Because every other Trump EO has been so carefully considered and implemented?
Trump is a “make it so” kind of guy. He’s also actively engaged in slashing government jobs. That’s not an incentive for careful investigations.
To be clear, I think a program like this could be a net positive. But I have zero faith that it’ll come from a Trump whim.
You mean Jean-Luc Picard? I don't know, I think if Trump was a starship captain he would be Jellico. "Get it done."
You know Jellico was pretty based. Much more reasonable seeming on secondary viewing.
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I doubt Trump gave much of a thought to the money laundering implications, but somebody at FinCEN is already looking into it, I guarantee it.
Trump's previous EOs added enhanced background check requirements to EB-5 and other such programs, and they were already on top of it.
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$5 million seems like too much to attract a lot of interest, especially since becoming a US citizen makes one subject to global US taxation regardless of residence.
This'll bring in tons of Chinamen looking to move somewhere they're protected from the CCP's ravages, and probably Russians as well. These people will subsequently pay lots of taxes.
I doubt this will make any noticeable dent in the UAE's Russian population, even in net worth.
Yeah, the Russians just buy Maltese or Cypriot citizenship and travel to the US easily on that. Then they don’t pay US taxes.
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Ehhh. Let us assume that the $5 million has to come in the form of liquid assets, because that's what it seems like Trump is talking about. Not moving a business here, not opening a factory, cold hard cash. Going off the 2024 Knight Frank's Wealth Report which I found on wikipedia, it looks like there are only about 626,000 or so people in the world who can afford that, if we assume that you need a net worth of $30 million, an Ultra-High Net Worth Individual (UHNWI), to spend $5 million in cash (which if anything is probably overestimating the number). Just under a third of those (225,000) already live in the US. There are less than 100,000 Chinese residents - and presumably citizens - who can afford that lump sum. The overwhelming majority of the rest come from countries which are, relatively speaking given the current state of geopolitics, friendly to the US. Germany, Canada, France, the UK, Japan, Italy, Australia, Switzerland. India only has about 13,000 residents who could afford to make that kind of payment. Russia has less than a thousand, since the rankings stop at 30 with Vietnam (752 UHNWIs) and Russia doesn't even make it onto the list.
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Golden Visa in Australia is like 3.7M USD and gets quite a bit of interest. You're underrating how many cashed up people there are in the world who want an escape lever.
It brings in a lot of retirees though, looking to exploit the pension system. They don't have to pay 5 million, just invest that money in the country.
The US scheme seems qualitatively different.
How much does $5M benefit the country? How much is the guaranteed pension? To my eye, it would be pretty close even for a healthy 65-year-old.
They keep their investments though. In principle they could invest in Australia from Shanghai, only now they're investing and getting pensions, possibly bringing in family too if they become permanent residents. And Australia is not short of capital, we have if anything too much capital in the country, pumping house prices up to the moon with our massive superannuation funds.
Surely they don't capture 100% of the value of their investment, though. If the financial system is willing to pay you $100k for the use of your money, then they must be using it to create at least $101k of value overall. Otherwise what's the point?
Ah, that may be a problem. Nobody said that markets have to be efficient, and I could believe that they're just stuck in a bad habit at this point.
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Yes, but now there are also tariffs, which change the equation quite a bit if you run a business.
US citizens aren’t exempt from tariffs when importing from abroad.
Not yet we aren't!
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I don't understand...there have always been tariffs.
Trump is dramatically increasing them.
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The USA already offers immigrant visas for only one million dollars (800 k$ if the investment is made in a rural area). A later-published version of your article discusses the difference between the existing program and Trump's suggestion.
See also this partial list of countries that offer "golden visas".
"the Trump gold card"? Named thus by an underling of his in an official function? Classy. Now I imagine a card made from a pound of gold with his name and face stamped on it.
I mean, being ruled by the ueber-rich is one thing, but must they be so crass and egomaniac about it? Aesthetically, I would much prefer some vampire aristocrat who has enough taste not to attach his name to his policy nor tweet every brain fart.
In retrospect, what the US National Park Service should have done is preemptively re-brand themselves as the Trump National Park Service, in which case DOGE would have found someone else to downsize.
Trump is popular among hoi polloi partly because he rejects elite taste.
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Somebody get this man an Obamaphone to go with his Trump Gold Card.
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