Donald Trump unveils new $1,000,000 ‘gold card’
Donald Trump has announced a new million dollar 'gold card' for people who want to buy a residency in the US.
If you've paid much attention to the man's policy on immigration, you'll likely know that Trump is very much not a fan of it, unless you happen to have f**kloads of money to pay his government to move to the US.
When he's not banging on about walls and making up all sorts of things about migrants, he's sitting in the Oval Office signing documents with a marker pen, and one of the latest from him is a way for rich people to permanently relocate to America.
This is part of the Trump administration's overhaul of the visa system in the US, so the Americans currently have visas called EB-1 and EB-2, which are employment-based visas that can offer a path to US citizenship.
Advert
They're supposed to be for people with 'extraordinary ability', 'advanced degrees' and the like, and according to Politico, the 'gold card' is meant to be replacing these when it comes to people who have 'exceptional value' to the US.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said it would make money for the American government, possibly as much as $100 billion, which Trump suggested could be used to pay down the US debt.
Considering US debt is somewhere around $37.5 trillion, it's really not going to do very much at all to help with that.
Lutnick said about 80,000 gold cards would be made available at first, and that the US would stop 'taking in the bottom quartile' and instead 'only take extraordinary people at the very top'.
It's one million dollars for someone trying to get one for themselves, or two million dollars for companies trying to sponsor a migrant through the process so they can hire them, along with a $15k vetting fee.
The website set up to try and flog these gold cards also says a platinum version is 'coming soon' and will cost five million dollars to let someone spend up to 270 days in the US without being taxed on non-US income.
It really is a different country for the rich.
That's not the only move Trump is making to charge more for immigration in the US.
There's another type of American visa called H-1B, which is for skilled workers, and there are up to 85,000 up for grabs each year.
The administration fee used to be $1,500, but if the Trump administration gets their way it's going to cost a lot more than that, as the White House announced they wanted to charge an annual fee of $100,000 on all H-1B visa applications.
Among the biggest employers of people on H-1B visas are the tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
According to the BBC, Amazon have told their staff on this type of visa to stay put in the US, advised anyone abroad to return to the US before the deadline closed and said anyone who couldn't make it back before the new rules kicked in should avoid trying to get into the US 'until further guidance is provided'.
Topics: Donald Trump, Money, Politics, US News
Joe Harker