Donald Trump has shaken up the global cash-for-visas trade by announcing a US “gold card” with a $5mn price tag, blowing past the cost of investment-linked visas or citizenship in Europe, the Caribbean and the Middle East.
Countries have competed frenetically to sell residency or citizenship rights to the wealthy in recent years, as the millionaire class expands and more of its members search for overseas homes — or a plan B — because of domestic political instability or threats to their fortunes.
But the trend has also stoked concern that so-called golden visa programmes are creating security risks and offering an avenue for money laundering.
The president said his premium-priced gold card, which will come with the same rights as a green card, would attract talent and reduce the national debt because applicants would pay a $5mn fee to the federal government.
“I happen to think it’s going to sell like crazy. It’s a market,” Trump said on Wednesday. He has also said the gold card would provide a route to US citizenship.
But he is launching the scheme into a market where prices are several rungs lower: a Portuguese investment visa costs €500,000 — or a smaller sum as a donation — and Maltese citizenship €650,000, while an investment visa in the United Arab Emirates carries a price tag of about $550,000.
Trump’s plan also raised concern because he said it would replace an existing US programme: the EB-5 visa, which requires an investment of at least $800,000 in the US and dates back to the early 1990s.
The US issued just over 12,000 EB-5 visas in the year to September 2024, of which 69 per cent went to Chinese nationals, according to state department data.
Michael Wildes of Wildes & Weinberg, an immigration lawyer who has worked with clients including Melania Trump, said: “The [EB-5] law has over time been perfected so that it stands the test of economics, presidents, politics and world interests.”
He called the gold card proposal a “marketing ploy” and said: “The numbers don’t have to be $5mn. Not everything big is good.”
Other lawyers noted paying $5mn as a fee was far less attractive than investing in an asset that would generate a return, as with the EB-5 and the other cash-for-visas schemes globally.
Trump named Apple as a company that could be willing to pay the fee to hire immigrant employees who were “number one in their class at top schools”. Asked if the card would be available to Russian oligarchs, he said: “Possibly. Hey, I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.”
While people on US sanctions lists would be barred from the scheme, Nuno Cunha Barnabé, a lawyer who advises on Portugal’s golden visas, said: “The big question is whether the [US gold card] programme is available to people who are sanctioned by the EU or the UK.”
The UK scrapped its golden visa scheme in 2022 as part of a crackdown on dirty money. The UK programme — which required applicants to invest £2mn to settle in the country — proved particularly attractive to wealthy Chinese and Russian investors.
Trump’s price tag is closest to New Zealand’s golden visa scheme, which after changes announced this month requires a NZ$5mn (US$2.9mn) investment directly into the country’s businesses or NZ$10mn in lower-risk investments.
Along with the Chinese, millionaires from other emerging markets including India, Pakistan, Turkey and South Africa have been active in the global hunt for cash-for-visa programmes. But Britons looking for post-Brexit options have been prominent too.
Immigration advisers also report a steady stream of Americans seeking alternatives to their home country, with a new uptick driven by the alarm of some US citizens over Trump’s second presidency.
But even as they leave, there are compelling reasons for others to want to get to the US, said Dominic Volek, head of private clients at Henley & Partners, a firm that helped design citizenship programmes in Europe and the Caribbean.
“It’s still an amazing country for wealth creation — and wealth preservation,” Volek said. “In countries like China and India, the wealth creation opportunities are second to none. But once you get to a certain level of wealth, it’s the preservation that becomes a little bit more challenging.”
The EU has been a popular destination for golden visas despite some tightening of the rules of some schemes in the past two years. In April, Spain will close its golden visa programme, which between 2013 and early 2024 granted residency to 14,500 people, many of them Chinese and Russian.
Portugal removed the option to invest in real estate and instead requires applicants to put €500,000 into investment funds, but applications have continued.
Italy’s scheme, dubbed the “dolce vita” visa, is tied to investments of at least €250,000; a similar Greek programme requires a minimum investment of €800,000 in property in popular regions or a €250,000 investment in historic buildings.
EU countries that trade cash for citizenship have drawn more controversy. Chief among them is Malta, which is the only remaining member state to sell passports after the European Commission pressed Bulgaria and Cyprus into scrapping their programmes.
Malta has granted citizenship to individuals including Russian oligarchs and politically exposed people, and the commission is challenging its scheme in the courts.
Brussels’ argument is not based on the nature of individuals who have taken up the visa, but rather on a contention that citizenship should be based on a “genuine link” to the country rather than payment or investment.
The Caribbean is another cash-for-citizenship hub, with programmes in Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, St Lucia, Dominica and St Kitts and Nevis. Their primary appeal is not sunny island life but the fact that citizenship brings visa-free or visa-on-arrival travel to more than 100 countries, including in some cases Europe’s Schengen zone.
The European Commission has introduced a mechanism to suspend visa-free travel from countries whose programmes it deems risky. Late last year the EU revoked visa-free travel for citizens of the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu, whose citizenship-by-investment programme predominantly catered to Chinese applicants.
Trump said he hoped to begin selling the gold cards, which he likened to a “green card plus”, in about two weeks. On Wednesday he added: “I think it’s going to be very treasured.”
Additional reporting by Steff Chávez in Washington, Amy Kazmin in Rome and Eleni Varvitsioti in Athens; data visualisation by Martin Stabe
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