Trump's Gold Card Coming Soon, Musk's DOGE Software Underway

Photo : Reuters

US President Donald Trump has asked Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to create a new online system for selling the “Gold Card” to wealthy immigrants. This Gold Card is a special visa that costs $5 million, and it will make it easier for rich people to move to the United States.

Musk's team is working with several US government departments, including the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, to create the website and application system for the Gold Card.

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In late February, President Trump introduced the Gold Card as a new way for very wealthy people to get US citizenship. At first, not much was known about who could get this Gold Card or how it would work.

The Gold Card is meant to replace the old EB-5 visa program, which allowed foreign nationals to get a green card if they invested at least $800,000 in US businesses and created jobs for American workers. The EB-5 program helped raise $4 billion for the US government last year.

Trump showed a laminated version of the Gold Card, which has his face, the Statue of Liberty, and a bald eagle on it. He said it would be ready in "less than two weeks."

The project to create the Gold Card is being led by Marko Elez and Edward Coristine from Musk's team. They have been working on this project for at least a month.

Elez was in the earlier this year after being linked to an account online that shared some racist posts about US immigration. Coristine, who is 19 years old, was fired from an internship in 2022 for leaking private information from his company.

Even with these issues, the two of them have been meeting with government officials to understand how the current visa process works. They are trying to find ways to speed up the process for rich people who want to move to the US, so they can get approved for a visa in about two weeks instead of waiting for years like most people do.

Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Secretary, has also talked about the Gold Card. He said he had sold 1,000 of these visas but did not show any proof of the sales at that time. Lutnick explained that anyone who gets a Gold Card will become a permanent US resident. However, he did not say if they could become US citizens later on.

Lutnick also explained that people who buy the Gold Card for $5 million will be allowed to live in the US as long as they pass the background checks and follow the law.

He also confirmed that Elon Musk’s team is building the software for the Gold Card system. The program is expected to be ready in "about a week and a half."

The Gold Card program aims to bring in wealthy investors to the US and help them become residents quickly. But some people are worried about what this could mean for the rest of the US immigration system.