When he debuted the plans last February, Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed 200,000 people were lining up to pay $1 million each for the president’s “gold card” visa scheme.
More than a year later, the administration has approved only one unnamed person.
The Homeland Security program grants employment-based green cards for a $1 million “gift” to the U.S. government, regardless of merit. Businesses seeking visas for foreign employees are required to pay $2 million.
A website to begin accepting applications was launched in December. More than four months later, Lutnick says there are “hundreds in the queue” who paid the $15,000 application fee for the president’s pay-to-play immigration scheme — and only one person has been approved for it.
“This is a new program, and they’ve just set it up, and they wanted to make sure they did it perfectly,” Lutnick said Thursday during his testimony to the House Committee on Appropriations. “It’s a DHS program done with a rigorous, rigorous vetting.”
The identity of that one approved applicant remains unclear.
DHS referred The Independent’s questions to the Department of Commerce.
Immigrants applying for lawful permanent status, or a green card, are currently facing wait times of more than three years, and applicants are often locked in years-long legal battles in immigration courts while continuing to pay taxes through their employment.
But the “gold card” effectively allows wealthy foreigners to fast track their way to legal status in the U.S.
Applications are open to anyone with $1 million, which the administration considers proof of “exceptional business ability” for an employment-based visa.
There is nothing in the application process that stipulates that the money comes from one’s own business or employment. It also does not appear to prevent anyone from applying using money from a parent or family member, or from a loan, or from using cryptocurrency to pay the fees.
EB-1 and EB-2 visas cover foreign workers who are considered to have “extraordinary ability” and “outstanding” work, including in medicine, arts and sciences. Congress caps the number of EB-1 and EB-2 visas that can be issued each year and requires that they be allocated in the order in which they were filed.
But Trump’s new program “prioritizes wealth over intellect or ability” by converting visas into an illegal revenue-generating scheme at the expense of immigrants whose admission into the country is established by law, according to a federal lawsuit challenging the program.
A group of noncitizen doctors and researchers seeking permanent lawful status in the U.S. are calling the program an illegal “fast lane” that cuts out qualified immigrants and prioritizes Trump’s wealthy foreign allies.
“Forget ‘give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,’” said Norm Eisen, co-founder of Democracy Defenders Fund, which is supporting the litigation. “Donald Trump’s maxim is ‘give us your money, your oligarchs and your privileged few’ when it comes to his Gold Card program that is illegal.”
The Trump administration is meanwhile moving aggressively to strip legal status for tens of thousands of immigrants and denaturalize citizens as part of his mass deportation campaign. The Department of Justice has identified 384 foreign-born Americans whose citizenship it wants to revoke, according to The New York Times.
Trump’s gold card, however, is “a direct path to Citizenship for all qualified and vetted people,” he said.
The program’s website — trumpcard.gov — promises to “unlock life in America” with legal U.S. residency “in record time” after a background check from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a $15,000 processing fee to the DHS, and a $1 million payment to the government.
Companies sponsoring employees for the visa are required to pay $2 million, plus an annual maintenance fee of $20,000 and a 5 percent transfer fee every time they want to switch the visa from one employee to another.
All applicants must still be eligible for lawful permanent resident status, and a visa must be available to them. Several countries have significant wait times of a year or longer, based on visa availability, and the president has indefinitely shut down visa applications from dozens of countries.
“America’s opportunities accelerated,” the website says. “Unmatched Opportunities Await.”
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