US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has announced plans to offer a “gold card” visa that can be bought for $5 million (Rs 43.5 crore approximately) as a route to American citizenship.The proposed visa will replace the existing EB-5 visa for foreign investors, which grants residency to those who invest $800,000 (Rs 7 crore) to $1 million dollars (Rs 8.71 crore) and create at least 10 jobs. The EB-5 programme is popular among Indians with sizeable investment potential.“We are going to be selling a gold card… We are going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday.“It’s going to give you green card privileges, plus it’s going to be a route to (American) citizenship, and wealthy people would be coming into our country by buying this card,” he said, adding that details of the scheme would come out in two weeks.Explained | US Gold Card Visa: What is Trump’s $5 million ‘gold card’ route to US citizenship“It’s somewhat like a green card, but at a higher level of sophistication, it’s a road to citizenship for people, and essentially people of wealth or people of great talent, where people of wealth pay for those people of talent to get in, meaning companies will pay for people to get in and to have long-term status in the country,” he said.“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.Trump said Russian oligarchs could qualify for the gold cards, when asked by a journalist if they would be eligible. “Yeah, possibly… I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people,” he said.Story continues below this adLater, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the “Trump Gold Card” would replace the 35-year-old EB-5 programme within two weeks.“The EB-5 programme… it was full of nonsense, make believe and fraud, and it was a way to get a green card that was low price. So the President said, rather than having this sort of ridiculous EB-5 programme, we’re going to end the EB-5 programme. We’re going to replace it with the Trump gold card,” Lutnick said.Also Read | Trump signs executive order to end US birthright citizenship. Can he do it?He said the gold card — actually a green card that comes at a price — would “raise the price of admission for investors” and do away with “fraud and nonsense” that, he said, characterises the EB-5 programme.While the EB-5 visa mandates creation of at least 10 jobs, there was no mention of such a requirement for the proposed “gold card” visa. Trump floated the idea of selling 10 million of these visas to help reduce the federal deficit, calling it “great, maybe fantastic”.Story continues below this adWhile the US Congress determines qualifications for citizenship, Trump said “gold cards” would not require Congressional approval.The EB-5 programme, administered by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, was created in 1990 to “stimulate the US economy through job creation and capital investment by foreign investors”, according to the USCIS website.According to the US Homeland Security Department’s latest statistics, around 8,000 people were granted EB-5 visas in the 12 months ending September 2022.Sukanya Raman, country head at Davies & Associates, a global immigration-focussed law firm, said the USCIS report for Q4 of fiscal year 2024 showed 4,567 submissions for EB-5 regional centre visas, meant for contributing investments to certain specified projects.Story continues below this adSpeaking to The Indian Express, immigration experts said the EB-5 programme had become popular among Indians over the last eight years or so.The EB-5 programme is used in large measure by Indian and Chinese citizens, some of whom are already in the US on other visa programmes including the H-1B, VarunSingh, managing director of Bengaluru-based immigration and citizenship firm, XIPHIAS Immigration, said.“In fiscal year 2024, a total of 733 EB-5 visas were issued to Indian applicants through consular processing, all within the unreserved category,” Alex Jovy, immigration advisor at Davies & Associates, told The Indian Express over email.Story continues below this adHowever, a significant number of Indian EB-5 investors obtain their green cards through adjustment of status within the US, so the total number of Indian participants may be higher, he said.On the proposed ‘gold card’ visa, Jovy said: “There are no real details as to when it might come into effect and what the requirements will be… Any changes to the current EB-5 programme or new immigration programmes will require an act of Parliament to take effect.”Besides the investment threshold, the basic difference between the two visa programmes seems to be on job creation, said Singh. “While EB-5 mandates 10 local jobs to be created and application is approved only once that condition is fulfilled, the new programme is merely about the investment amount — it is directly in terms of purchasing of property or acquisition or buying of shares,” he said.So, while the EB-5 is a complex process, a “gold card” could be a simple, direct process, even as details are awaited, he added.Story continues below this adMeanwhile, immigration experts said Trump’s “gold card” visa was unlikely to trigger a major inflow of wealthy global investors.In 2021, a Congressional Research Service report had warned of fraud risks in the EB-5 programme, including concerns over verifying the source of investment funds. Consequently, the programme was “reformed” in 2023, with mandatory background checks on the source of funding.Currently, over 100 countries, including Spain, Greece, Malta, Australia, Canada and Italy, offer such “golden visas” to wealthy applicants. Trump’s plan comes at a time when the European Union is putting pressure on its members to withdraw or tighten such residency-by-investment programmes, which are said to bring marginal benefits to GDP, while increasing the risk of tax evasion. –With Agencies