President Trump’s Gold Card Plan Will Slash Deficit by Billions Without Tax Hikes
Trump’s deficit reduction plan outsources revenue raising rather than taxing Americans
President Donald Trump’s proposed “Gold Card” visa program, which would grant U.S. residency and a path to citizenship for a $5 million fee, is a brilliant plan to reduce the federal deficit without raising taxes. Congress should immediately pass this plan, as it fits with Trump’s broader strategy of replacing taxes on Americans with foreign revenue like permanent tariffs.
The Gold Card plan would also ease the burden on Congressional Republicans, who have the thankless task of trying to cut the deficit while keeping the 2017 tax cuts. American residency will always be in high demand, and the Gold Card provides a way for Congress to raise money without facing political backlash from angry taxpayers.
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The Gold Card Visa Beats What We Have Today
Unlike the existing EB-5 visa, which requires foreigners to invest in the private sector in the hope the government collects extra crumbs in corporate taxes, the Gold Card would allow wealthy immigrants to pay the $5 million fee directly into the U.S. Treasury. The Gold Card also wouldn’t include the administrative costs associated with the EB-5, which maintains a backlog more than double its annual cap.
The EB-5 visa began with the Immigration Act of 1990. Foreigners could obtain permanent residency if they invest in a new company based in the U.S. that creates at least 10 full-time jobs. It requires $800,000 in Targeted Employment Areas (TEA), rural areas or those with high unemployment rates, or $1,050,000 in non-TEA businesses. In 2023, 96% of EB-5 visa recipients chose the cheaper option.
This incentive structure doesn’t serve American taxpayers or the foreign applicants very well.
The foreigners don’t care about investing in American businesses. They want green cards. So, the rational thing for them to do is invest the bare minimum with as little due diligence as possible, because the green card is the expected return on investment. This often leads to investments flowing into unproductive or even fraudulent business plans, such as the Chicago Convention Center investment scheme that embezzled over $150 million from 290 EB-5 seekers.
From the American taxpayer’s standpoint, there is no way to accurately quantify how much revenue the EB-5 visa has added to the U.S. Treasury through corporate taxes over the past three and a half decades. But it’s certainly far less than it would have been if the government required EB-5 recipients to pay even the lower amount of $800,000 directly to the Treasury.
Free Foreign Money Without Raising Immigration Rates
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said the Gold Card could raise $1 trillion or more in revenue. He estimated roughly 37 million people in the world who could afford it and 200,000 to a million could eventually buy it. This is likely overly ambitious, but it would raise far more in a short amount of time than EB-5 did over 3 and a half decades.
If the U.S. lifted the cap on the EB-5, it would take in 20,000–30,000 per year. Replacing it with the Gold Card would cause that demand to fall because it’s 5 times more expensive than the EB-5. Some of this would be offset by eliminating the application headaches, wait times, and Ponzi scheme dangers that likely convinces some wealthy foreigners the EB-5 is not worth the hassle. Another factor that would offset falling demand from the price increase is what the Gold Card offers. The EB-5 requires recipients to remain involved in the business they invest in. Gold Card recipients would never have to visit the U.S. or have anything to do with the country if they so choose.
Lutnick argued the Gold Card would not greatly increase the number of immigrants, as many recipients would use it as an insurance policy and have no desire to move to the U.S., much less become naturalized citizens. He noted that if he were not a U.S. citizen, he would purchase 6 Gold Cards for himself and family members to provide an exit plan if they had to leave their country because of natural disasters or war.
If even 20,000 foreigners took advantage of this opportunity yearly, it would add up to $100 billion per year to the Treasury. That’s 20,000 foreigners paying more than 99 percent of Americans will ever pay in their lifetime in taxes. As Restoration News has shown, Congress can more than offset this slight increase of permanent residents by slashing chain migration, skilled H-1B visas, and temporary work visas. These often go to immigrants who take jobs Americans could easily fill and who often extract their wages from the American economy through remittances.
The Gold Card visa idea represents a visionary plan to reduce the U.S. deficit without burdening taxpayers. By providing a new foreign source of revenue, it would allow Congress to more easily set America on the path to deficit elimination without committing political suicide through tax increases.
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