President Donald Trump Continue to put pressure for a “gold card” visa that would allow foreign nationals to buy their path in the United States, by replacing a controversial visa program that has been rallied for years by concerns about the potential abuses of China.
Trump again presented his gold card plan, which would allow people to buy a path to citizenship for $ 5 million, on “Sunday Morning Futures”.
“I believe that Apple and all these companies that cannot bring people to get out of university and come because they are thrown, I think about it, you get your number one diploma at the Wharton School of Finance or Harvard or Stanford, and you are thrown outside the country. Get these best students,” Trump said on Sunday.
“You are going to have a lot of companies that buy gold cards. So for $ 5 million now, it’s a lot of money when you add it, if we sell a lot,” he said, describing it later as a “green card on steroids”.
Trump praises $ 5 million in “gold card” as a new path to citizenship
Donald Trump, president of the time, smiling during the Americafest of Turning Point USA at the Phoenix Convention Center on December 22, 2024 in Phoenix. (Rebecca Noble / Getty Images)
Host Maria Bartiromo asked Trump about the concerns that the Chinese could exploit it.
“They can, and they can, but they don’t have to do it. They can do it other ways,” said Trump.
The visa would replace the EB-5 Investor visa program. This program was created in the 1990s and generally required an investment of $ 1 million, but this could reach $ 500,000 in classified areas as high poverty and the creation of at least 10 jobs.
There had been unsuccessful efforts to reform the program in the administrations of Obama and Trump among the concerns that the program had been used by the Chinese Communist Party.
“Although the objective of the EB-5 program to stimulate capital investment and job creation in the United States has been commendable, it has become clear in recent years that the CCP could abuse the program to access the permanent American residence for their members”, the Republicans on the Chamber’s judicial committee said in 2020.
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They cited statistics that show that between 2012 and 2018, almost 80% of nearly 10,000 visas went to investors of Chinese origin and that the majority of investors in the arrears were Chinese.
This also involved the creation of “regional centers” which pooled money aimed at and financed significant investments across the country. Although intended to promote growth in poor or rural areas, the drawing of regional cards around specific impoverished pockets has been used to pump money in luxury projects in places like New York and San Francisco.
Chinese President Xi Jinping approaches the opening ceremony of the fall semester of the Chinese Communist Party school in Beijing. (Photo / xinhua, li tao)
A bipartite attempt to reform the program was blocked in 2021 and the financing of the program was authorized to expire. It was later resurrected in 2022 with reforms introduced by meaning. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa and Patrick Leahy, D-VT.
The reforms aimed to fight against fraud and included audits, checks of history and visits to the site for EB-5 projects, as well as stricter definitions of terms such as “capital” to prevent abuse. It has also increased the necessary level of financing for poverty areas high at $ 800,000. Of the 10,000 EB-5s made available each year, 2,000 will be intended for rural or high poverty areas.
The provisions also include the increase in the powers of the Ministry of Internal Security (DHS) to verify foreign capital to ensure that it comes legally and demanding foreign agents and third -party promoters of the program to register with the DHS.
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However, the EB-5 continues to arouse criticism, some immigration hawks saying that it had not resolved the fundamental problems of the program. Commerce secretary Howard Lungick recently described the program as “poorly supervised, poorly executed”.
Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center of the Heritage Foundation, shared these concerns about EB-5.
“With any benefit of immigration to America, if you offer it, they will come, and too often seek or use the fraudulently profit. The EB-5 Investor Visa program is no exception, as the secretary of trade Larick has mentioned. Examples of fraud that the program sees include allegations of false jobs, bogus projects and investment schemes Pyramid” declared.
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“The extraterrestrials consider fraud in immigration services as a low risk, a high reward because it is so rarely studied, and even less punished. This is one of the reasons why we have more than 9 million requests for immigration benefits pending at DHS and another nearly 4 million immigration cases pending to the MJ,” she said.
“It is important to examine the current arrears to immigration fraudDepter these cases and expel extraterrestrial candidates, which helps to carry out an administration priority-mass deportations, “she added.
