Gold card application form is now available

[S2N 624]

On 12/12/2025 at 4:52 PM, mam521 said:

The worry is the wording.  Unrestricted and gift do not equate to taxes.  Sounds like free invitation "appropriate funds for personal gain". Unrestricted or not, I wanna see where these funds are going.  

The government can receive gifts from the public. The Department of Commerce is being listed as the beneficiary.

 

Honestly from a clean-hands perspective it’s less sketchy than EB-5, which is essentially just the government subsidizing commercial real estate developers and directing money to well-connected middle man. It’s wildly unpopular with members of Congress of both parties.

[mam521 2,824]

10 hours ago, S2N said:

The government can receive gifts from the public.

Gift, by definition, is something voluntarily transferred, without compensation.  

 

Bribe, on the other hand, is to provide something of value to persuade or influence a judgement or the conduct of a person in the position of trust.  

 

How is a required gift, voluntary?  How, also, is it without compensation, if one receives a golden ticket?  

 

Under the FCPA, one is permitted to "expedite or secure the performance of a routine governmental action which is routinely and commonly performed by a foreign official" which includes processing of paperwork to obtain visas and/or paperwork to allow a person to do business in a foreign country - that's covered by the $15k application fee, but the million dollar "gift" cannot influence the decision to issue or guarantee a visa. 

 

It states on the Trump Gold Card website that a successful applicant will be vetted by DHS and will be subject to available EB-1 and EB-2 visas.  USCIS falls under DHS, but DoS is a separate agency that works with DHS.  Can you imagine?  Pay $15k, get an I-140 approval, pay your $1mil and the DoS says "nah bruh, sorry, we're not issuing your visa".  👀

 

As others have said, at least an EB-5 requires some sort of capital investment as well as a business plan to prove economic benefit to the US, which seems less sketchy and probably a lot easier.   

 

I'd wager dollars to donuts the "platinum card" is a no go thus far because of the "gifting" as well as the benefit of 270 tax free days per year on foreign income while living in the US.  Any non-resident alien for tax purposes, PR or citizen's foreign income has always been subject to US taxes, period.  Getting past those sketchy benefits is instrumentally more challenging as it's multiple laws to challenge with those bad boy promises.  

[S2N 624]

1 hour ago, mam521 said:

Gift, by definition, is something voluntarily transferred, without compensation.  

 

Bribe, on the other hand, is to provide something of value to persuade or influence a judgement or the conduct of a person in the position of trust.  

 

How is a required gift, voluntary?  How, also, is it without compensation, if one receives a golden ticket?  

 

Under the FCPA, one is permitted to "expedite or secure the performance of a routine governmental action which is routinely and commonly performed by a foreign official" which includes processing of paperwork to obtain visas and/or paperwork to allow a person to do business in a foreign country - that's covered by the $15k application fee, but the million dollar "gift" cannot influence the decision to issue or guarantee a visa. 

 

It states on the Trump Gold Card website that a successful applicant will be vetted by DHS and will be subject to available EB-1 and EB-2 visas.  USCIS falls under DHS, but DoS is a separate agency that works with DHS.  Can you imagine?  Pay $15k, get an I-140 approval, pay your $1mil and the DoS says "nah bruh, sorry, we're not issuing your visa".  👀

 

As others have said, at least an EB-5 requires some sort of capital investment as well as a business plan to prove economic benefit to the US, which seems less sketchy and probably a lot easier.   

 

I'd wager dollars to donuts the "platinum card" is a no go thus far because of the "gifting" as well as the benefit of 270 tax free days per year on foreign income while living in the US.  Any non-resident alien for tax purposes, PR or citizen's foreign income has always been subject to US taxes, period.  Getting past those sketchy benefits is instrumentally more challenging as it's multiple laws to challenge with those bad boy promises.  

Whether it is classed as exchange revenue or donation doesn’t really matter — it’s perfectly within the norm for the government to enter into transactions where the a member of the public receives a benefit in exchange for a monetary contribution to the government. OMB will figure out the classification of it as exchange revenue or donation for financial reporting purposes probably around July of 2026 when they issue the annual financial reporting guidance to agencies. It’s definitely not a bribe, and FPCA wouldn’t apply to a contribution to an executive department of the United States government that has no power at all over immigration policy (Commerce.) This is similar to a lot of the European golden visas that allowed contributions to state founded “cultural foundations” and follows that playbook. They could create a wholly owned government entity to handle the donations, but I don’t think that would help with the corruption concerns.

 

They’re also not paying the $1mil to DoS or DHS. They’re paying it to Commerce.

 

I maintain it’s less corrupt than the current EB-5 system, which miserably fails at its stated goals of job creation. It’s a shady visa that really should be done away with. How it works in practice is you pay an upfront investment to a middle man or rich developer who then identifies a pre-existing construction project they were already going to build with workers that probably already worked at another LLC owned by the same group of people, and moves forward with plans that were going to happen one way or another. The Kushners were big into using it with foreign investors during Trump 1.0

 

Paying the government $1mil directly is a lot more above board than the government subsidizing construction companies and middle men to accept cash from rich foreign investors. Especially when the current government has such deep ties to the real estate industry.

 

The fact we’re even having this discussion illustrates the point: it’s very difficult to see what’s actually going on with EB-5 and track who benefits. $1mil directly to a government agency will be tracked in published financial reports.

Edited yesterday at 04:34 PM by S2N