The Significant Impact of the “Gold Card” Visa Program

Photo Credit: Evans Love

In September, during the current presidential administration, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14351, launching the “Gold Card” visa program. This program is essentially targeted more towards wealthy individuals and oligarchs worldwide, allowing them to gain visa status within the United States. The systematic process of this program is as follows: those who can provide the nation a “financial gift” of upwards of 1-5 million dollars, either through their own financial wealth or a corporation that that individual may request from, will be able to receive a visa. This would impact the economic status of the nation in a positive way, but would greatly impact the immigration system in a negative way. This is because having wealth flow through from rich immigrants, who buy land and create business (which will further create more jobs in the United States) would help boost the economy. On the other hand, having an increase of rich immigrants who can afford this program and take advantage of the “buy in” process of citizenship, will further corrupt the preexisting and flawed immigration system in the United States. 

The direction the current administration is going is towards a hierarchical structure, where those who are of extreme wealth and power continue to uphold the status that they possess. This puts those who are already at a disadvantage either financially or due to their citizenship status even further behind the system. My goal is to advocate for why this is an issue and the ways that it further creates financial instability for Americans. Instead of fixing a system that is already broken, the elites that reside within the United States as well as those around the world continue to take advantage of it instead, making it an issue that needs to be addressed immediately.

In this article, I am going to explain two crucial outcomes that would be the result of the “Gold Card” visa program being implemented. One, this program will create a significant negative impact for immigrants in the United States by putting the current flawed US immigration system at risk of being overloaded. Whereas secondly, it would help the economy, while simultaneously disregarding the risk that would be present. To begin, one of the most important reasons as to why this new program would be a crucial issue for the immigration system, is because of its power to potentially overload the system itself. Meaning, because this program moves towards targeting those who are of wealth and power to gain citizenship in the United States. This new visa program will make it even more accessible to do so. However, although this system is noticeably created for a specific group of people that are able to afford it, it will continue to be processed through the same system that is used for immigrants who have been trying to gain citizenship beforehand and further backload the system. Additionally, this program has not yet been fully implemented into the system until December of 2025. There is not an exact data set available at the time to show exactly the number of Gold Card immigrants that would come into the United States, through this unfair process. However, the sole goal of this article is to show the possible outcomes of the implementation. Ultimately, if the program gains popularity, it would drown the system that is needed to process citizenship with information from those who are being prioritized, and prevent visas for those who are economically disadvantaged from being able to receive one, as they do not meet the requirements. The requirements, seemingly include the following: having enough money to afford the “Gold Card” program or having connections such as corporations, who can help you afford one.

This further impacts a system that has been known to be a very slow process, taking many immigrants years, or even decades, to gain citizenship, and many immigrants are yet to hear back on any status updates. For example, according to data provided by the American Immigration Council, it can take as long as 5 to 25 years for immigrants from Mexico to gain citizenship in the United States. This time frame is not ideal and unfortunately has been considered the “norm” in terms of the expected time that it would take for citizenship to be true for immigrants in America. This creates a stressful environment for individuals who have come to the United States with the hopes of creating a new life for themselves and their families. This is because, along with immigrants having to worry if they will gain citizenship sooner or later, they are in a completely new environment where they have to adjust to everything, ranging from the food, language, culture, and societal expectations. According to data provided by the National Library of Medicine, among the many migrants that travel to a new country, 47% of those individuals are known to have a link with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Furthermore, refugees are also known to experience PTSD just as badly, impacting their overall mental health. Creating a stressful and unrecognizable pathway to gain citizenship in the United States.

On the other hand, once this program has been fully implemented, the economy would benefit positively from the results. The reasoning behind this is because the program itself is already targeted towards those who are wealthy and designed with the idea of bringing in foreign wealth to incentivize global elites to gain citizenship in the United States. This will encourage them to buy property to expand businesses and corporations in the nation, which would create more jobs and opportunities within the United States. This would help boost the economy, and create more opportunities overall for residents. According to the Economic Innovation Group, by final implementation of the program and as the results come through, there is an estimated possibility of the program generating billions of dollars in revenue. That can be used to help with funding for the United States government.

However, despite the positive results that would be seen once this program is implemented, it does not outweigh the consequences that would follow through. Apart from the disadvantages that current immigrants in the United States will experience, due to system overloading, there would be numerous legal complications that would occur as well. According to Forum, the Immigration and Nationality Act that currently exists within the government is responsible for many of the structural processes for the pathway of obtaining green cards. Having the program being implemented into the system, will clash with the preexisting structure that already keeps things in order. Furthermore, the “Gold Card” program will just be a way to bypass the system itself. Another legal issue that would arise from the program being implemented would be the fact that it is directly through an Executive Order, whereas, Congress primarily holds the role for being responsible for laws surrounding immigration. According to an article by Squire Patton Boggs, the “Gold Card” program does not have direct correlation to permit legislation. Due to this, the article also states that, “... anticipated guidance from DOS and DHS will need to fill in legal and factual gaps in order to minimize the impact of potential lawsuits…” (Squire Patton Boggs). For clarity, the DOS is the United States Department of State and the DHS is the Department of Homeland Security. 

Ultimately, this program would be an unfair system built upon the idea to strengthen the economy by putting those who are at a disadvantage in an even more so situation behind those who are wealthy and of power, creating a pressured environment for those who do fall behind. 

This program is set to be implemented in December of 2025. As mentioned previously, it was originally an Executive Order signed in September of 2025 by President Donald Trump. Recently, applications for the program have been opened to the public and are accepting applications since an announcement made on December 10, 2025. However, although applications have just opened, it is still unclear exactly what the statistics of the program will turn out to be, especially pertaining to the impact that it will hold on the United State’s economy and the nation’s current immigration status, but updates are periodically available. As the program develops, data will soon be provided to gain a better understanding of its potential impact.

Overall, this program would definitely have its pros and cons. But from research and previous data gathered on the state of the current immigration system in the United States, the cons greatly outweigh the possible benefits. According to data provided by the Pew Research Center, as of June 2025, 51.9 million immigrants currently live in the United States, with 19% of those immigrants being a part of the US labor force. Furthermore, this showcases that the possible implementation of the “Gold Card” visa program, will greatly impact millions of immigrants in the United States.