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Journalism of Courage
US President Donald Trump announced a new pathway for foreign investors seeking permanent residency in the United States, and ultimately American citizenship, through a “Gold Card” on Tuesday (February 25).
With a price tag of around $5 million, it would give people Green Card privileges. “Wealthy people would be coming into our country by buying this card,” Trump said.
The idea of a system for charging high-net-worth individuals for an expedited path to residency in a country is not unique, with more than 100 countries offering such programs. What is the rationale behind them and why have they been criticised at times?
Generally, individuals hoping to immigrate to a country must fulfil criteria such as a minimum educational qualification and an offer letter from a company to work there. This process can be tedious and take years.
On the other hand, the major criterion for golden visas is an individual’s ability to pay a substantial amount of money to the host country, as the name suggests. This can happen in the form of investments in government bonds, real estate and more.
Henley & Partners (H&P), a global firm working in residence and citizenship by investment, says on its website: “In its most basic form, golden visa acquisition, commonly associated with residence by investment, denotes the process whereby qualified, vetted candidates are granted residence rights in exchange for a defined economic contribution to the host country.”
A similar avenue is citizenship by investment (also called “golden passport”), which offers full citizenship rights under similar principles. However, these are offered by a smaller number of countries.
Theoretically, these systems can lead to economic benefits for both the individuals and the host nations. “Acquiring a golden visa is the best possible insurance policy against economic and political risk in a volatile world. In addition to enabling global mobility, golden visa programs give wealthy individuals the option of physically relocating to a more favorable jurisdiction and accessing full residence rights,” the website notes.
For host nations too, they can help generate revenue. An article from the think tank Council on Foreign Relations in 2024 said that for some countries, the program arose from their economic situations.
Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, among the first countries to create a citizenship-by-investment program in 1984, did so to “bolster its cash-strapped economy amid a drop in world prices for sugar, its main export.” Portugal did it in response to the 2008–09 global recession and the 2012 European debt crisis.
According to H&P, golden visa legislation has been introduced in over 100 countries. This includes over 60% of EU member states, including Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Malta, as well as Australia, Canada, Italy, and the UK.
A 2022 report from the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society and the University of Oxford found that such programs have proliferated in recent years. “A donation of $100,000 can secure a second passport in one of several Caribbean countries, and the purchase of a second home in the Mediterranean is sufficient to gain residence in several European Union (EU) member states,” it said.
In the Caribbean, a popular destination for such programs, real estate investments can help build or improve hotels and resorts that are the mainstay of the tourism economies. Some of the most highly ranked eco-resorts in the region have been funded this way, the report said.
With the rising number of such programs, visa holders have been accused of misuse. A 2019 report from the European Commission (“Investor Citizenship and Residence Schemes in the European Union”) found that “Such schemes have raised concerns about certain inherent risks, in particular as regards security, money laundering, tax evasion and corruption.”
It raised the threat of people who may have invested in an EU nation for “pursuing illegitimate ends, such as evading law enforcement investigation and prosecution in their home country and protecting their assets from the related freezing and confiscation measures.”
Indian businessman Mehul Choksi, who was wanted in India for carrying out one of the country’s most notorious banking scams worth Rs 13,000 crore, fled to Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean in 2018. He acquired its citizenship through an investment program. Similarly, businessman Nirav Modi, who is an accused in the Punjab National Bank fraud case, is believed to be residing in the UK via an investor visa he applied for in 2015.
Some countries have sought to tighten rules and further scrutinise applications. The UK, for instance, scrapped the Investor visa (Tier 1) for wealthy investors in 2022, over concerns of illicit Russian money coming in at a time of heightened tensions with Russia over the Ukraine war. “In Bulgaria, legislation requires the applicant to present a clean criminal record certificate and a document showing that no criminal proceedings are pending or ongoing against the applicant,” the European Commission report said.
Another major concern in Europe is that with the rise in housing prices, these programs have been curtailed to accommodate the locals’ needs first. A recent Bloomberg report said that Ireland, the Netherlands, Greece and Malta have either ended or tightened the rules around their golden visa or equivalent policies. Last year, Spain also said it would end the program to address its housing crisis.
A more fundamental question has also been raised about such practices, given the heated debates on immigration around the world of late. Trump, for instance, has cracked down on undocumented immigrants who have at times fled political or economic turmoil to reach the US. Some Trump supporters have also questioned the H-1B visas for highly qualified Indian workers. In this scenario, allowing residency and citizenship at a hefty price tag sends a message from the Trump administration about exactly who is welcome in the country.
