Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Wednesday that the administration is set to launch a registration website for President Donald Trump’s Gold Cards in the near future.
Trump has touted the Gold Card as being “better and more sophisticated” than a green card and would allow the “most successful job-creating people from all over the world to buy a path to citizenship.” Applicants would pay $5 million for a Gold Card visa.
Lutnick was interviewed by Axios co-founder Mike Allen at the outlet’s “Building the Future” event on Wednesday and said the administration is launching the registration website in about a week.
“I expect there’ll be a website up called TrumpCard.gov in about a week, the details of that will come soon after, but people can start to register. And all that will come over a matter of the next weeks – not months, weeks,” Lutnick said.
TRUMP TO INTRODUCE ‘GOLD CARD’ VISA FOR WEALTHY INVESTORS WITH $5 MILLION PRICE TAG: ‘ROUTE TO CITIZENSHIP’
Lutnick said that all applicants will be vetted and that the Gold Card recipients “are going to great people who are going to come and bring businesses and opportunity to America.”
“This is for people who can help America to pay off its debt. Why wouldn’t you want a plan B that says, God forbid something bad happened, you come to the airport in America and the person in immigration says, ‘Welcome home.’ Right? As opposed to, ‘Where the heck am I going if something bad’s happening in my country,'” Lutnick added.
COMMERCE SECRETARY LUTNICK ATTEMPTS TO CALM CONCERNS OVER TRUMP’S ‘GOLD CARD’ VISA PITCH
He went on to say that he sees the Gold Cards as potentially raising $1 trillion in federal funds if there are 200,000 recipients.
“We get 280,000 visas per day now for free, not counting the 20 million people who broke into this country for nothing under Biden,” he said. “And, so, I want you to think about that. We give it away for free and said Donald Trump’s going to bring in a trillion dollars for what purpose? To make America better. And it makes perfect sense to me.”
The U.S. currently offers a similar program through the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, which has been in place since 1990 and is administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS).
According to USCIS’s website, the visa is open to investors who “make the necessary investment in a commercial enterprise in the United States” and “plan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs for qualified U.S. workers.”
Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner, Caitlin McFall and Madeline Coggins contributed to this report.
