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President Donald Trump’s “gold card” visa has been approved for one person so far, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Thursday, while appearing before a congressional committee. The visa is pitched as a faster route for wealthy foreigners to legally live and work in the United States after making at least a $1 million investment.
Lutnick’s updated approval figure came as questions persisted about the program’s pace compared with earlier claims Trump administration officials made when it launched in December. After the program began, Lutnick said the U.S. government had sold $1.3 billion “worth” in just several days—an earlier statement that appeared to conflict with the administration’s latest count of approvals.
At the committee hearing, Lutnick did not address the apparent discrepancy during an exchange with a congresswoman. In the earlier period, Trump stood by holding up a “gilded ticket” while describing the plan as a kind of accelerated version of the green card, according to the Associated Press account of the event.
Lutnick also described how applicants are processed. He said each applicant pays a $15,000 fee on top of their million-dollar investment, and that the fee supports what he described as “rigorous vetting” of those applying to the program, which he said eventually opens a path to U.S. citizenship. He also said the fee structure is used alongside a program component that allows corporations to spend $2 million for a foreign-born employee, plus a 1% annual maintenance fee.
Despite only one approval, Lutnick said the administration expects a larger pipeline. “There are hundreds in the queue that they are going through,” he said, adding that the administration’s developers “wanted to make sure they did it perfectly” as the program was set up.
The “gold card” visa is meant to replace the EB-5 program, a longstanding investor-visa category that offers U.S. visas to people who invest about $1 million in a company with at least 10 employees, according to the Associated Press report. Lutnick previously said at a cabinet meeting a year ago that the program could raise $1 trillion in revenue and help “balance the budget,” as the report described; the debt figure cited in that account was $31.3 trillion, with outside projections that this fiscal year’s annual deficit would be roughly $2 trillion.
Trump’s campaign and presidency have repeatedly emphasized the administration’s immigration approach, including deporting people without legal status, while still supporting skilled immigration, the Associated Press report said. The report also noted that the “gold card” concept resembles “golden visas” offered in multiple other countries, including the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Malta, Australia, Canada and Italy.