Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency Commission, confirmed in sparse detail that a "quiet trial" run of President Donald Trump's $5 million gold visa card program was rolling out.
"We're doing a quiet trial to make sure the system works properly. Once it is fully tested, it will be rolled out to the public with an announcement by the President," Musk wrote Sunday on X in reply to a report from Wired.
Trump floated the idea in February as a way to attract wealthy foreigners into the United States.
According to Newsweek, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick touted that, so far, the program had garnered 250,000 applicants and had already sold 1,000 cards in a week, raising $5 billion in a "single day." Lutnick also said that visas would hold benefits such as not requiring the cardholders to pay taxes on overseas income.
"It's going to be a route to citizenship," Trump said, "and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They will be wealthy, they will be successful, they will be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes."
Lutnick, who has been pushing for the new visa program, proposed, according to Wired, that the new program could replace the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program.
The EB-5 program stands as the closest comparison to Trump's gold card visa. EB-5 was created by Congress in 1990. Per Wired, it "allows roughly 10,000 foreigners to obtain a green card each year by making a $1.05 million investment in the United States (or $800,000 in rural areas and regions plagued by high unemployment), supporting at least 10 full-time jobs."
Reportedly, the program was created with care in mind to prevent "corrupt oligarchs to unfairly buy their way into the United States."
"There's a whole unit in" U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services "filled with economists and national security experts" who review EB-5 applications, Doug Rand, a former senior adviser at USCIS under the Biden administration, said.
He added that there was so much paperwork associated with EB-5 applications that it caused the floors at USCIS headquarters to sag.
It would appear that that level of scrutiny would not apply to Trump's visa gold card program.
When asked in February if a Russian oligarch would be eligible, Trump reportedly said from the Oval Office, "yeah, possibly, hey, I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people."