US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has said it is a “shame” that students from countries such as India and China must return home after graduating from leading American universities, as he promoted the new “Trump Gold Card”, which he says will enable companies to hire and retain such talent in the United States.
On Wednesday (10), Trump announced the launch of the one-million-dollar Trump Gold Card, a visa programme offering a pathway to US citizenship. The Gold Card is based on an individual’s ability to provide a substantial benefit to the US.
“It is a gift, getting somebody great coming into our country, because we think these will be some tremendous people who wouldn’t be allowed to stay. They graduate from college, you have to go back to India, they have to go back to China, they have to go back to France. They have to go back to wherever they came from. Very hard to stay. It’s a shame. It’s a ridiculous thing. We’re taking care of that,” Trump said during a White House roundtable.
Flanked by IBM’s Indian American CEO Arvind Krishna and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, Trump announced that the Gold Card website is live and that companies can “buy” the Gold Card to keep graduates they hire from top American universities, including Wharton, Harvard and MIT, in the US.
Trump said he had heard several times from Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives that they struggle to hire graduates from top institutions because they “don’t know whether or not you can keep the person”.
Students, he said, are “thrown” out of the country.
“You graduate number one from your college, and there’s no way of guaranteeing that they’re able to stay in the country,” he said, adding that Cook had raised this as a “real problem”.
“It’s not going to be a problem any more. As you know, they used to send people up to Canada and other places, other countries. So we solved that,” Trump said, adding that the Gold Card will bring in billions of dollars for the country.
“So it’ll be a great thing. We’ll take in, I think, billions of dollars — many billions of dollars even. So that’s very exciting,” he said.
Trump said companies would be pleased with the Gold Card, which he described as having greater advantages than a green card, the route to permanent US residency.
He said companies would now be able to go to schools such as the Wharton School of Finance, New York University’s Stern School of Business, Harvard and MIT, and “buy a card” to keep a student in the United States. “So there’s certainty,” he said.
Trump characterised the Gold Card as “a Green Card, but much better, much more powerful — a much stronger path, and a path is a big deal. Have to be great people, but [a] much stronger path”, which he said would also help companies.
He gave the example of IBM wanting to hire a top graduate from Wharton but being unable to guarantee they could stay in the country; with the Gold Card, the company could buy the card so that “the employee can be there for essentially a very long period of time”.
He added: “It’s so needed for the companies. It’s basically a much better form of green card. And you can’t get green cards. They are impossible to get. This is much better than a green card.”
Providing details of the scheme, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said the Gold Card will cost $1 million for an individual applicant and $2m for a corporation. It will involve “full” and “best” vetting to ensure applicants “absolutely qualify to be in America”.
“Then the company can keep them here, and they have a path to citizenship. Obviously, they have to be perfect people in America, and having passed the vetting. After five years, they’ll be available to become citizens,” Lutnick said, adding that the corporation can then put someone else on the card.
“For a company, they can keep putting people on the card — one person per card — and for an individual, it’s a million dollars. And it’s a gift to the United States of America, to help America be great again under Donald Trump,” Lutnick said.
He added that the Trump Gold Card is part of the already approved visa categories, ensuring that only the “great people” come into the country. The average green-card holder earned less than the average American, he said, adding that “they were more likely to be on the dole and on federal assistance programmes than average Americans”.
The visa website, trumpcard.gov, went live on Wednesday afternoon and includes a link to the official application, promising “US residency in record time”.
“For a $15,000 DHS processing fee and, after background approval, a contribution of $1m, receive US residency in record time with the Trump Gold Card,” the official website states.
(PTI)
