Golden visas are residency or citizenship programmes that grant immigration rights in exchange for an investment or donation. More than 60 countries, including America, offer such schemes. About a dozen countries sell passports outright.
America's golden visa, known as EB-5, requires an investment starting at $800,000 and caps visas at 10,000 a year. Investments are structured as low-interest loans, each of which must create ten jobs. Investors accept below-market returns—typically 0.5–1% on invested capital—as the effective cost of the visa, according to Madeleine Sumption of the University of Oxford. The programme has ended up as a subsidy for property developers and middlemen rather than a boon to public finances. Demand is highest among Chinese and Indian citizens; since applicants queue by country and each country gets the same maximum allocation, Chinese applicants can wait ten years for a visa and Indians five. The EB-5 is inscribed in law until 2027.
In April 2025 President Trump proposed replacing the EB-5 with a $5m "gold card" offering permanent residence with a route to citizenship. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said the proceeds would go towards paying down the national debt. Trump also promised recipients an exemption from tax on income earned abroad—an exemption unavailable to ordinary citizens and green-card-holders—though Congress would need to change the tax code to grant it. The administration claimed it could sell 1m cards, raising $5trn, targeting 37m people globally who could afford it. Industry observers were sceptical: a rule of thumb holds that clients should not tie up more than a tenth of their net worth, implying applicants would need at least $50m. Only about 100,000 people worldwide have that much, according to Dominic Volek of Henley & Partners, and most already live in America. He expected just a couple of thousand applicants a year.
Small island states—some Caribbean countries, Malta and Vanuatu—make a killing on passport sales, which can represent a double-digit share of government revenue, according to Kristin Surak at the London School of Economics. An EU passport via Malta costs around €1m ($1.1m).
We'll cross that bridge when we come back to it later.