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Notes -
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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