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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.
$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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