On September 19, 2025, Donald Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) titled “The Gold Card”. (As of the submission of this article for review, it has not had a number assigned by the Federal Register, who records all presidential releases.) This EO purports to create a new type of visa for people who “voluntarily provid[e] a significant financial gift to the Nation”, known as the Gold Card.
Already, there are a couple of weird things about this. Namely, “cards” as an immigration factor typically refer to citizen status (such as “white cards” being for natural-born citizens and “green cards” being for naturalized immigrants). This can cause some confusion, and is a mistake I’ve seen people make (particularly in more independent sources), so I wanted to address it up front.
The text of this EO is on the longer side, but is fairly straightforward in practice. The Secretaries of Commerce, State, and Homeland Security (Howard Lutnick, Marco Rubio, and Kristi Noem, respectively) have 90 days to set up a program where, if an individual donates a certain amount of money to the government, they are given “eligibility for an immigrant visa using an expedited process, to the extent consistent with law and public safety and national security concerns.” An individual would have to pay $1 million, or $2 million if a third-party business is making the donation on their behalf.
Noem and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are to treat this donation as evidence of eligibility for a visa, of “exceptional business ability and national benefit,” and of “eligibility for a national-interest waiver.” This basically means that their business skill is affirmed by their wealth and this means that they should be allowed in the United States as a potential national benefit on a work visa without requiring that they have a job. The order also cites a series of laws that this would fall under, notes that applicants are still subject for security screening, and has provisions for who is responsible for various fees.
There is one other phrase that is worth discussing, when the EO says applicants are still subject to statutory “limits on the number of visas”. The system for determining this is complicated, but in total, there can only be 140,000 permanent employment visa immigrants per year (which is what this qualifies as). I’m not entirely sure if this type of immigrant would fall under permanent immigration preference category one or two (as summarized by the American Immigration Council), but in either case, only 40,040 individuals are allowed in per category, per year. Additionally, no more than seven percent of all total, non-refugee immigrants can come from one country per year. This expedition process would prioritize rich applicants who can afford to pay the federal government and have no clear direct benefit to the economy to take priority over skilled individuals coming to work in high-demand fields, and would similarly prioritize people with no connection to the United States over family members of current citizens when it comes to country caps.
I’ve seen somewhat conflicting reports about whether or not this is something that can be done at the executive level. Because this is just a new process under existing immigration policy, it’s possible that it’s legal. Even if it isn’t, there are questions about if the courts would actually overturn this (given recent court decisions overturning substantial precedent to support administrative policies). However, regulating immigration is one of many things that falls under the supervision of Congress, as it requires the passage of laws, which is their domain. There is an argument that this is executive overreach.
It’s not entirely clear what the practical application of this will look like. It’s also not entirely clear what demand there will be (though given the competitive nature of both country-capped limits and professional limits, any demand would reduce previous recipients). There are also questions about whether this will set a precedent for pay-to-play in other areas of governance. That said, this will change how immigration is processed for the foreseeable future.