Donald Trump wants a certain kind of immigrant: the Uber rich

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. The Economist 4 min Read April 21, 2025, 07:33 AM IST Trump proposes gold card for permanent residence of $ 5 million (no foreign income tax). (Beeld: AP) Summary He is right that America’s current “Golden Visa” is too expensive in his love for Lucre Donald Trump. In their pursuit of efficiency, free marketers can also be. Consider the sale of citizenship. Most people do not like the idea of ​​treating national belonging as a commodity. About a dozen countries Hawk passports and over 60, including America, offer residence in exchange for investment or donation. The ‘gold -fish’ scheme is cumbersome, expensive and ineffective. At this point, the president and the market agree. Mr. Trump intends to raise the running rate for a gold visa to $ 5 million. Besides price, details about his upcoming “golden card” are haze. Will the $ 5 million be a donation or a recoverable investment? Trade secretary Howard Lutnick says it will pay the debt, which implies the former. The visa will allow permanent home with a route to citizenship. Incredibly, Mr. Trump that recipients do not have to pay taxes on revenue earned abroad-an exemption that is not available to citizens and green card holders. The Department of Government efficiency is reportedly building software to administer it. When the card arrives, someone’s guess is. For now, it’s talk: Mr. Trump has not signed any executive order to launch the scheme; Attorneys suspect that Congress should authorize it. If he can hand out the cards by hand, his proposal raises questions. The Trump team says it can sell 1M, raising $ 5TRN. It would be a large amount, enough to pay off about a seventh of America’s debt. Mr. Lutnick says the target market is the 37 million people who can afford the card worldwide. Is it real? Immigration lawyers contacted by the economist say they had many queries. Many people will pay good money to live in America. The current Golden Visa, known as EB-5, is extremely too much subscribed. This indicates that America itself under price. Like most such schemes elsewhere, EB-5 needs an investment, which can start at $ 800,000. The Caps Visa program at 10,000 per year. The question is the highest among Chinese and Indians. As applicants in the row and each country receive the same allocation, China and India have the biggest backlog. Chinese people can wait ten years for a visa; Indians wait five. America’s government could get a better agreement of EB-5: It is a soup for the real estate industry more than an edge for public finance. Investments are structured as low interest loans and each must create ten posts-a provision that helps the scheme make the congress tasty. Investors accept small, under-market returns (usually between 0.5% and 1% on investing capital) as the cost of the visa, says Madeleine’s Sumption of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. In America, it is a gravy train for developers and middlemen. Mr. Trump is right that some foreigners will pay more for speed and comfort, and that donations to the Treasury would make a difference to public finances. Small island states (some Caribbean countries, Malta, Vanuatu) make a murder of passport sales. There they can represent a double-digit share in government revenue, Kristin Surak says to the London School of Economics. The impact of the golden card in America would be smaller, but still considerable. That said, the forecast of 1 million sales looks just as wrong as a fur steel on a sweat night in Mar-a-Lago. The rule of the immigration investment industry is that customers should not bind more than a tenth of their net worth in an investor visa. This means that gold card applicants have to put at least $ 50 million. There are only about 100,000 such highlights worldwide and most are already in America, says Dominic Volek from Henley & Partners, an adviser to the Footloose Ultra Empire. To find the optimal fish price, Mr. Trump runs an auction, but he doesn’t suggest it. The tax issue is a great unknown and it will be decisive. The promise of Mr. Trump to release revenue that recipients earn from gold cards elsewhere would be a big draw. If not for the tax liability, the demand for an EB-5 would be even higher. But a cutout would attract the cry of everyone else. Congress will have to change the tax code. It looks unlikely. If you do not allow the tax exemption, it will temper the question. Everything said it was difficult to introduce hundreds of, let alone hundreds, thousands of millionaires for ten years each year and pay a solid sunken cost and high tax just to skip the rope. Mr. Fullly expect only a few thousand gold card applicants a year at the $ 5 million price. There are cheaper ways for rich people to come to America: some can get an E-2 visa by investing in a US company; Companies owners can open and transfer a subsidiary to an L-1. And although Mr. Trump says his golden card will replace EB-5, it is written in the law until 2027. People in the industry say that demand for gold visas is rising from the other direction: from outgoing Americans. It is likely to take up if Mr. Trump promotes instability or the economy tank, says Mona Shah, a British lawyer in New York. “Personally, I feel it too,” she sighed. “I still miss Europe.” While this is happening, an EU Passport courtesy of Malta is for about € 1 million ($ 1.1 million). Catch all the business news, market news, news reports and latest news updates on Live Mint. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates. More Topics #Donald Trump #Genitstate #us Visa #us Immigration Mint Special