“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” These words, uttered by presidential candidate Donald Trump, galvanized the nation in 2015.
Trump won his first presidential election on a campaign of fear, and this fear was a prominent motivating factor for many of his voters. According to Pew Research Center surveys from 2016, 79% of Trump voters identified immigration as a very important issue in their voting decision.
This wall, so often referenced in slogans and chants, was Trump’s selling point: a glimmering beacon of exclusion that promised to preserve the sanctity of a white, English-speaking nation.
Trump justified his xenophobia by focusing on the alleged criminality of Mexican and Central American immigrants — these were “bad hombres,” and their immorality disqualified them for entry through the golden door.
In his 2024 campaign, Trump doubled down on this rationale, this time shifting his focus to Caribbean immigrants. During the presidential debate, he reiterated the unconfirmed claim that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. But never fear — concerned voters could protect their pets and their neighborhoods by voting him into office, allowing Project 2025’s deportation sweeps to restore law and order to their communities.
And vote they did. Trump rose to power once more with 49.8% of the popular vote. He immediately implemented Project 2025, a political initiative devised by a conservative think-tank that aims to restructure the federal government to support authoritarian right-wing policies. One initiative came as a particular shock: the Gold Card visa.
Proposed as a way to reduce the United States’ national debt, the Gold Card allows wealthy foreigners to effectively purchase permanent U.S. residency for $5 million each.
This program is intended to replace the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. EB-5, established by Congress in 1990, allowed foreigners to obtain a Green Card by investing in a U.S. enterprise and promising to create and maintain at least 10 full-time jobs for U.S. workers, bringing wealth to underprivileged regions.
The Gold Card program entirely abandons this community-focused prerogative, reducing the wealthy foreigners’ obligation from a long-term commitment to a simple one-time fee.
Furthermore, this program contradicts Trump’s supposed preoccupation with moral purity. During his campaigns, Trump claimed that his immigration policy would protect Americans from rapists, drug dealers and criminals.
However, some of the most infamous criminals of our era could have easily afforded this fee, speeding down the path to citizenship while asylum-seekers languish in limbo. Sinaloa Cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada possessed roughly $3 billion at the time of his arrest in July 2024. Alleged serial rapist and Egyptian luxury mogul Mohamed Al-Fayed had $2 billion at the time of his death, while convicted rapist and British entrepreneur Lawrence Jones was a multimillionaire at the time of his arrest.
Additionally, the Gold Card could open the doors for Russian oligarchs with whom Trump has personal ties. This list includes figures such as Dmitry Rybolovlev, whose offshore wealth concealment was cited in the Panama Papers, or Roman Abramovich, an investor guilty of bribery, loan fraud and over-pollution.
The Gold Card confirms that Trump never truly cared about protecting Americans from crime — after all, he is a white collar criminal and sexual abuser protecting his own. Instead, Trump’s immigration policy is motivated by racism and a deep disdain for the poor and needy, those who could most benefit from American residency.
America has long prided itself on being a bastion of democracy, refuge and freedom, but Trump’s Gold Card is a threat to core virtues, treating residency as a commodity to be sold instead of a right to be upheld. The damage done by this policy should serve as a warning for future voters — greed and corruption cannot make America great.
