US President Donald Trump has announced plans to sell American green cards to “wealthy and successful” foreigners for nearly $8 million ($US5 million).

Speaking in the Oval Office this week, Trump announced the new “gold cards” for foreigners, which will give the equivalent residency of a green card and a path to American citizenship.

It will replace the EB-5 visa, which gives a green card to foreigners if they make investments in the US and create American jobs.

Trump predicted that 1 million of these “gold cards” will be sold, but also said that up to 10 million may be sold.

“It’s somewhat like a green card, but at a higher level of sophistication,” Trump told reporters.

“It’s a road to citizenship for people, and essentially people of wealth or people of great talent.

“We’re going to be putting a price on that card of about $US5 million and that’s going to give you green card privileges-plus.

“They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people.”

Money for citizenship

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared alongside Trump and said the new “gold cards” would replace the EB-5 visa scheme, which was created in 1990 to “stimulate the US economy through job creation and capital investment by foreign investors”.

The EB-5 scheme allows investors to apply for lawful permanent residence if they make necessary investment in a commercial enterprise in the US and plan to create or preserve 10 permanent full-time jobs for US workers.

According to the US government, 8,000 people obtained this investor visa in the 12 months to 30 September 2022.

“Rather than having this sort of ridiculous EB-5 visa program, we’re going to end the EB-5 program,” Lutnick said.

“We’re going to replace it with the Trump gold card, which is really a green card.

“They’ll be able to pay $US5 million to the US government.

“They’ll have to go through vetting, of course, to make sure they’re wonderful world-class global citizens.”

Trump said that it will be available to individuals from around the world, including Russian oligarchs, with the President saying some of them are “very nice people”.

“Apple and all these companies that want to get people to be working for them will be able to buy a card, and for the people that are number one in their class at top schools, I see that as one of the things,” Trump said.

“It will be people with money and people that create jobs.”

The proposed gold card scheme has been “all worked out from the legal standpoint”, Trump said.

“It’s a path to citizenship, a very strong path to citizenship, but we’re [granting] citizenship for that, I’d have to get Congress,” he said.

Australia’s ‘gold card’ scrapped

A number of other countries have similar investor visas, although most require foreigners to make investments to a certain threshold in order to qualify for residency, rather than to pay the government directly.

The Significant Investor Visa operated in Australia from 2012 until last year, when it was axed by the Labor government.

The scheme granted permanent residency to wealthy individuals who invest at least $5 million in Australia.

Across this time, more than 2,300 Significant Investor Visas were issued, with 85 per cent of successful applicants coming from China.

A Productivity Commission report into the scheme found that while it had injected $11.7 billion into the economy, the prioritisation of it over skilled visas had left the economy $3.4 billion worse off, and that there was not a case for retaining it.

The scheme was axed last year, with then-Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil saying that “most Australians would be pretty offended by the idea that we’ve got a visa category here where effectively you can buy your way into the country”.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has signalled he may bring back this investor visa if he wins the upcoming federal election.

“I don’t think there’s anything remarkable in saying that we want to attract high net wealth individuals to our country who can bring potentially hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in projects,” Dutton said earlier this year.

“People bringing money to our country and investing has been part of the success that we’ve got.”