Update: On December 10, 2025, the Trump administration opened the application process for the Trump Gold Card on the Gold Card homepage, trumpcard.gov. The site notes that the process should take weeks after the application is submitted and the applicable fees are paid. However, according to reports, some administration officials have noted that “a small number of countries may have wait times of up to a year or more based on visa availability.” Given existing visa backlogs for certain countries like India and China, the wait times are likely to last multiple years (see full post below for further explanation). The “Platinum Card” is not yet processing applications; there remains only a wait list for interested applicants.
On September 19, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) titled “The Gold Card.” The EO states that the order is intended as a way to “realign” immigration policy with the national interest, through the creation of a new “Gold Card” visa program “prioritizing the admission of aliens who will affirmatively benefit the Nation, including successful entrepreneurs, investors, and businessmen and women.” The EO also notes that the program will be overseen by the Department of Commerce—which notably has no current role in setting or governing immigration policy. The program would facilitate the entry of persons from abroad who can demonstrate “their ability and desire to advance the interests of the United States by voluntarily providing a significant financial gift to the Nation.”
It should be noted that new immigrant visas or green cards (which provide lawful permanent residence and can lead to citizenship) cannot be lawfully created without Congress. The EO broadly outlines how the Gold Card will be implemented. The Commerce Department would accept $1 million “gift” payments from individuals or $2 million if paid by a corporation on behalf of an individual. That money would then be deposited into a separate fund of the Treasury, which will be used “to promote commerce and American industry, consistent with the statutory authorities of the Department of Commerce.” Then, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which adjudicates green card applications, will consider the $1 or $2 million gift payment as evidence that applicants meet the criteria for green cards under two provisions of existing green card categories.
There are currently five existing employment-based (EB) green card preference categories, with separate subcategories with different terms and conditions. (These are distinct from green cards issued through family relationships, refugee status, etc.) The first, second, and third EB preferences, known as EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3, each have 40,040 green cards available each year, and EB-4 and EB-5 have 9,949 available each year. One of the subcategories in EB-1 is for persons of extraordinary ability in a field of science, arts, education, business, or athletics, who will work in that field in the United States, and whose entry will “substantially benefit” the United States. The $1 or $2 million payment would serve as evidence to DHS that the applicant meets the criteria for a green card in that subcategory.
The second EB green card preference category (EB-2) has a subcategory known as a national interest waiver, which allows DHS to waive the usual requirements for U.S. employers hiring a worker through EB-2 to first seek and hire U.S. workers before issuing an EB green card. This hiring search requirement is known as a permanent labor certification, and is intended to ensure that U.S. workers are not overlooked for jobs they are qualified for in the United States. If an employer gets a national interest waiver, the labor certification is waived because DHS admission of the applicant is deemed to be “in the national interest” in the area of the sciences, arts, or certain other professions. In this case, the $1 or $2 million payment would serve as evidence to DHS that the applicant meets the criteria for a national interest waiver under EB-2.
The EO directs the Commerce Department, the State Department, and DHS to create a process to implement the Gold Card within 90 days, including to create a new process for “expedited adjudication” of green card applications. A separate official government website, TrumpCard.gov, has been launched that includes answers to frequently asked questions about the new program and a form for potential applicants to sign up for a mailing list on future releases of information.
Trump’s Gold Card website also announces a future $5 million Platinum Card, but the Platinum card was not mentioned in the Gold Card EO or another EO. The only information included on the Platinum Card is the following: “The Trump Platinum Card will allow individual applicants to reside in the United States for up to 270 days per year without being subject to tax on non-U.S. income. No more travel visas.”
Impact: How the Gold Card program will work in practice is still unknown and it is likely to be subjected to legal challenges because it will modify an existing statutory framework created by Congress. Since little is known about how the program will be implemented, any analysis of it is speculative, but it’s reasonable to conclude that the $1 or $2 million payments are intended to influence DHS into approving petitions for EB-1 and EB-2 green cards that are being adjudicated by the agency. Since there are more applications than the number of green cards available, DHS might prioritize those where applicants have made a Gold Card payment. The legality of such a move would be questionable and applicants who have not made Gold Card payments would be likely to sue DHS.
Another issue to consider is the large backlog on the availability of green cards. There are annual numerical limits on EB green cards, and there is also a “per-country ceiling” on green cards — no more than 7% of green cards may go to the nationals of any single country. For EB-1 green cards, there are multi-year wait times because of backlogs for applicants from China and India. For EB-2 green cards, there are multi-year wait times for applicants from China, India, Mexico, and the Philippines. In practice, that means that applicants from those countries would have to wait between 2 and 12 years for their green card (according to the State Department’s latest Visa Bulletin) even if they were able to pay the Gold Card fee. Because the Gold Card program does not actually open up more available slots for green cards, which would require an act from Congress, the Gold Card visa would be less appealing for individuals from these countries. This would especially be true for applicants from India and China, who already have the longest wait times.
Another thing to note is that the fifth EB preference category, EB-5, is already a cash-for-green cards program. EB-5, also known as the Immigrant Investor Program, is for investors who can obtain a green card if they make a qualifying investment and meet certain requirements. Instead of paying a fee to the government, as the Gold Card program proposes, the EB-5 green cards require a minimum investment amount of $1.8 million in a new commercial enterprise that creates at least 10 new jobs, or $900,000 if the investment is in a rural area or area of high unemployment. Government audits, government scam alerts, and news reports have revealed that the EB-5 program is susceptible to fraud, investment scams, and associated with national security concerns. There is little oversight to ensure that job creation targets — the purported goal of the program — have been met. Yet there have been no major reforms to improve EB-5. It is reasonable to assume that a Gold Card program that is even less defined and less regulated than EB-5 could end up being rife with abuse and fraud, and also could create national security vulnerabilities.
In effect, the Gold Card program states outright that it would encourage immigration agencies to prioritize the ability to pay large sums of cash as a proxy for whether a prospective immigrant “deserves” to come to the U.S., rather than skill, merit, education, or qualifications. This would give advantage in our broken immigration system to only the wealthiest foreign nationals, without solving any problems with legal immigration backlogs or any stated plan or transparency for how the revenue collected would be used.