President Donald Trump, accompanied by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (L), speaks after signing an govt order within the Oval Office on the White House on September 19, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump signed two govt orders, establishing the “Trump Gold Card” and introducing a $100,000 charge for H-1B visas. The “Trump Gold Card” is a visa program that enables overseas nationals everlasting residency and a pathway to U.S. citizenship for a $1 million funding within the United States.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
President Donald Trump signed two govt orders Friday geared toward elevating billions of {dollars} via excessive visa charges for firms in search of to rent high-skilled overseas staff and for rich foreigners.
One of the orders creates a brand new visa class for individuals prepared to pay $1 million to enter the U.S., or whose employers are prepared to pay the U.S $2 million to sponsor them. While signing the order within the Oval Office on Friday, Trump dubbed the brand new visa the “Trump Gold Card.”
“This program will elevate greater than $100 billion, which we’ll use for slicing taxes and paying down debt,” Trump stated. “They’re going to spend some huge cash to come back in.”
A senior administration official who spoke on situation of anonymity later instructed reporters that the administration can also be engaged on a so-called ‘Platinum Card” to interchange an current investor visa. “Congress must approve it,” the official stated. The ‘Platinum Card’ will value $5 million. It will permit foreigners to spend as much as 270 days within the U.S. with out being topic to U.S. taxes on non-U.S. revenue.
The second govt order Trump signed Friday was a proclamation that goals to implement a brand new $100,000 charge for high-skilled staff to enter the nation via the H1-B visa program, a dramatic overhaul that the White House stated is geared toward curbing abuse of this system and defending American staff.
“We want nice staff. And this gorgeous a lot ensures that that is what is going on to occur,” Trump stated.
The H1-B visa program is for highly-educated, high-skilled staff like software program engineers or medical professionals. American firms in search of to rent a foreigner on an H1-B visa should first attest that they have not been capable of finding American staff with comparable expertise and that the foreigner will earn a wage much like what an American employee would earn.
Congress permits 85,000 H1-B visas to be issued via a lottery annually, and authorities knowledge present that the most important variety of these staff are sponsored by massive tech corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple.
But the Trump administration has stated this system is rife with abuse, and that regardless of the foundations many firms use H1-B visas to rent foreigners for lower than what they might pay Americans. A 2020 research by the Economic Policy Institute discovered that almost all H1-B employers do pay migrant staff lower than market price salaries.
During the signing ceremony on Friday, Trump and his Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, stated the $100,000 charge, due annually for every employee, will disincentivize that.
“Either the particular person may be very useful to the corporate and America,” Lutnick stated, “or they’ll depart and the corporate goes to rent an American.” He added that not will firms have the ability to put trainee staff on H1-Bs. “If you are going to practice individuals you’re going to practice an American,” Lutnick instructed reporters.
Current authorities charges for H1-B visas are trivial. It prices firms $215 to register for the lottery, together with a number of submitting charges.
The H1-B program has lengthy divided conservatives. Some, like former Trump adviser and tech mogul Elon Musk, have argued that the US doesn’t produce sufficient extremely expert engineers to fulfill the tech business’s demand. Others, just like the far-right pundits Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer, have criticized this system as dangerous for American staff.
Trump’s orders come as his administration has moved to implement a collection of upper charges on issues like asylum purposes and work permits, that are geared toward elevating income to fund new immigration brokers, detention facilities, and different immigration enforcement initiatives.
