Trump's immigration golden ticket not on the cards soon: experts

Donald Trump has boasted of selling US residency to wealthy foreigners through an around $5 million "Gold Card" from as early as March, but immigration experts say the planned visa cannot be created without Congress.
"We have it all worked out from a legal standpoint," the US president declared last month, assuring the new card would be on the market two weeks later. It "goes on sale very, very soon", he then told Congress Tuesday.
While his administration has "significant authority" to manage existing visa programmes, creating a new visa category "would require an act of Congress", Migration Policy Institute communications director Michelle Mittelstadt told AFP.
- Not without Congress -
A similar programme to the "Gold Card" already exists in the United States. Created in 1990 to stimulate the economy, the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program offered a permanent residency card -- better known as the Green Card -- provided they invest enough capital in an American business.
Other conditions include creating or preserving at least 10 permanent jobs reserved for American employees.
In the United States, permanent residents can usually apply for naturalisation after five years.
Some 8,000 people were issued a EB-5 visa in 2022, according to Mittelstadt.
"We're going to replace it with the Trump gold card," Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said.
The EB-5, he said, "was full of nonsense, make-believe and fraud, and it was a way to get a green card that was low price".
However, "an existing program established by Congress and set in the law cannot be unilaterally changed this drastically simply by the executive branch. It would not be legal," said Sharvari Dalal-Dheini, Director of Government Relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
The US Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to legislate on immigration under Section 8 of Article 1.
Trump claims that the United States could "sell maybe a million of these cards" to reduce the country's debt.
But "current law only authorises up to 10,000 EB-5 visas annually", Dalal-Dheini said. To change the quota, the backing of Congress would be essential.
- Long legislative process -
"It is highly unlikely that that the program could begin this month," Mittelstadt said.
Even with a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress, "it is likely that this type of legislation would require more than a simple majority to pass it," Dalal-Dheini said.
The legislative process could "take weeks if not months, or may never come to be".
It remains unclear what level of support the changes even has in Congress, she added.
"There are some pockets of resistance, even in conservative circles, to the idea of selling US citizenship," Mittelstadt said.
If Congress approved the new visa, it would still require "a significant period of time" for the country's immigration services to develop the necessary guidance and materials to launch the programme, she added.
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