He said it would replace the existing 35-year-old EB-5 visa program, which is available to foreigners investing at least $1 million in US businesses. The UK too has a scheme akin to EB-5 that has been sheltering the Indian fugitive Vijay Mallya for a long time and who is facing extradition.
The ‘Trump Gold Card’ is expected to come into effect by April, with around 10 million business visas likely to be offered initially, potentially leading to unprecedented competition. Under the extant EB-5 program in vogue since 1990, foreign investors have to shell out anywhere between $800,000-$1,050,000 in US businesses and create at least 10 new jobs.
The residency permit mind you under the scheme takes typically 5–7 years coming in the form of a green card. Flush with excitement Trump said gushingly; “wealthy people will be coming to our country by buying this card. 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,”
Well, someone’s win has to be someone else’s loss. The losers could be the Swiss banks (a metaphor for banks across the world conferring secrecy on the account holders) and Bitcoin (metaphor for all the virtual currencies) both harbouring substantially the ill-gotten wealth of sundry crooks, dictators, despots and power-dispensing officials. They could witness meltdown on a scale that could flutter their dovecotes. The flight of capital, as it were, to the US would warm the cockles of the US government which has been chafing at the intransigence of the Swiss banks harbouring many a US citizen and his wealth. The devil as always is in the details.
Will there be conditions like the past criminal record or absence thereof of the buyer of US citizenship? In other words, will his antecedents be looked into? If it is, it will be a prolonged affair which rules it out given the here and now tone of the Trump gold card announcement. It is possible though that the buyers may be asked to give a declaration of having a clean record and should it turn out to be a lie, his citizenship thus acquired on the fast track could be forfeited or cancelled.
Secondly, will the buyers be required to make the US their homes as well like the green card holders who have to live in the US for at least 180 days every year. This is likely given the accent on the buyer investing and splurging his money in the US. For, if the buyer of citizenship were to be allowed to live in his home country whence, he came from or elsewhere, the benefit to the US economy would be one-time and not recurring as envisaged by the contours of the scheme.
While the EB-5 scheme has been facing flak on grounds of fostering favouritism, the Trump gold card admittedly is more transparent at least given the contours of the scheme made public. It will definitely encourage wannabes to migrate to the US, lock stock and barrel with their families, the land of immigrants and a free country to the boot. While the Hispanics from Cuba and Mexico have been perceived by the Republicans as parasites, the wealthy Trump gold card holders are perceived to be contributing to the nation’s growth. Time alone will tell if this optimism is warranted. If they have a baggage of law-breaking in the country, they were citizens of before plumping for the Eldorado, as it were, of the US, the US government could be in the eye of the storm for giving sanctuary to the crooks enticed by the pot of gold.
For the garden-variety Indians, the H-1B work visa program remains the preferred and viable rout though theoretically they too can apply for the gold card as long as they can pay $5 million upfront. Since it would always remain a pipe dream for them, they would have to pray the H-1B route is streamlined.
—The author, S Murlidharan, is a Chartered Accountant and a writer on finance and legal topics. The views expressed are personal.
(Edited by : Unnikrishnan)
First Published: Mar 1, 2025 3:11 PM IST
