Trump's 'Gold Card' plan for US citizenship costs $5 million per card, aiming to attract wealthy immigrants.
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00:00Now, amid a showdown in America over Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, Trump has
00:07now called for super rich migrants to be in America.
00:13He is now proposing that you can actually buy US citizenship.
00:16According to Trump, you can pay $5 million and get what he calls a gold card for US citizenship.
00:24This is an equivalent of a green card essentially, but Trump has called it a gold card saying
00:29if you pay up $5 million, we will go ahead and give you a gold card for US citizenship.
00:35And Trump has said that he proposes to sell about 1 million of these gold cards, each
00:41costing $5 million.
00:43So imagine the kind of money that America will make from this scheme.
00:47We'll have to see whether it actually happens, but he has said Trump claims that this will
00:51become a reality very, very soon.
00:58We're going to be doing something else.
00:59It's going to be very, very good.
01:01We're going to be selling a gold card.
01:06You have a green card.
01:07This is a gold card.
01:09We're going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million, and that's going
01:13to give you green card privileges.
01:15Plus, it's going to be a route to citizenship and wealthy people will be coming into our
01:21country by buying this card.
01:22They'll be wealthy and they'll be successful and they'll be spending a lot of money and
01:26paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people.
01:30And we think it's going to be extremely successful and never been done before.
01:34Anything like this.
01:35But it's something that we're going to be putting out over the next, would you say two
01:38weeks out?
01:39You want to say a couple of words about OK, let's bring in Shashank Mathur for more details
01:45on this.
01:46Shashank, this seems to be Trump's bid to earn a few bucks from, in fact, having citizenship
01:52being given out, not a green card, but what Trump calls a gold card.
01:56Is this something that's actually feasible, something that can actually become a reality?
01:59Well, actually, there are a lot of countries around the world that do something like this.
02:04Canada has a system, Germany has a system, Greece, Ireland, Italy, a number of countries
02:08around the world have pathways, visa pathways for wealthy individuals from around the world,
02:14investors to come put money into their economies and they get residency and then that leads
02:19to citizenship.
02:20The United States itself has what's known as the EB-5 program, which allows you to come
02:24to the United States, gain a green card and then move on to citizenship.
02:28If you invest around a million dollars or so in targeted areas where there's unemployment,
02:33if you create jobs for Americans, you're allowed to come in and get that visa.
02:36So America already has a system like that.
02:38And this golden visa system that Donald Trump is going to be talking about is going to replace
02:42that EB-5 program.
02:43But it has been extremely controversial in the past.
02:45There are ethical concerns about whether U.S. citizenship or residency should be sold in
02:49such a manner where people, for example, green card holders or H-1B visa holders like the
02:54thousands of Indian-Americans who work in America, they have to wait for long periods
02:58of time.
02:59Isn't it unethical to be giving people a shortcut to cut through the line and get a visa?
03:03So there are ethical concerns.
03:04There are concerns about fraud and abuse.
03:06Donald Trump mentioned that Russian oligarchs, for example, would be free to also come in
03:11and invest their money, some of which may be dirty money, and put it into the American
03:16economy.
03:17This fraud and abuse is also a concern with the EB-5 program.
03:19And it has been controversial in the past couple of years.
03:22This idea of giving rich people, basically, a pathway to citizenship in America.
03:26So it has been controversial.
03:27But Donald Trump is a powerful president at this point in time.
03:30And this battle, therefore, will continue about whether America can, in fact, set up
03:34this golden visa scheme.
03:35Okay, Shashank, thanks very much for joining us with those details.
03:40Let's see really what happens.
03:41I'm sure there'll be a lot of Indians who can afford to spend that kind of money who
03:45will be watching very, very closely whether this is an option for them to buy a gold card
03:50to U.S. citizenship.