“They recently approved one person and there are hundreds more waiting in line,” Lutnick said in Congress when asked about the “gold card” project for foreigners, according to the CBS station. He defended the project’s slower progress, saying that the administration wanted to “make sure it was done perfectly.” It is not known who the first approved person is.
Trump showed the first “golden card” with his likeness last April, saying that rich foreigners will thus be able to buy permanent residence in the US in exchange for paying five million dollars.
This amount was later reduced to one million and the program was officially launched last December. Shortly after, Lutnick reported that in just a few days, the US government sold “golden cards” for 1.3 billion dollars. “It’s simply a green card on steroids,” reported Trump standing next to him. In addition, a year ago, Lutnick claimed at a cabinet meeting that the “golden card” would bring revenues of one trillion dollars to the state treasury and help “balance the budget”.
“Lutnick did not comment on this apparent contradiction at Thursday’s hearing in Congress,” NBC commented on the inconsistency with the current minister’s admission that the card had only been approved for one person so far.
For the first time, Trump announced the plan to sell “gold cards”, which would provide benefits to foreigners living on the “high end”, already last February. At the time, he claimed that it would probably be available even for Russian oligarchs. “I know several Russian oligarchs, they are very nice people,” said the American president. He defended the project by saying that it would help improve the US budget and attract wealthy investors to the US.
