Shame, Indian pupils have to leave: Trump unveils $1-mn Gold Card

US President Donald Trump announced the launch of a million-dollar “Gold Card” offering a pathway for immigrants to US citizenship, saying that it is a “shame” that students from India and China have to go back to home countries.

The Trump Gold Card announced on Wednesday is a visa based upon an individual’s ability to provide a substantial benefit to the US.

“It is a gift of getting somebody great coming into our country, because we think these will be some tremendous people that wouldn’t be allowed to stay,” Trump said during a roundtable in the White House.

Flanked by IBM’s Indian-American CEO Arvind Krishna and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell, Trump announced that the Gold Card website was live and companies could “buy" the Gold Card to keep the students they hire from top American universities such as Wharton, Harvard and MIT in the US.

Trump said he had heard from Apple CEO Tim Cook several times and other executives that they could not hire people from the best colleges because “you don’t know whether or not you can keep the person”. Trump said students were “thrown” out of the country.

“You graduate number one from your college, and there’s no way of guaranteeing... that they’re able to stay in the country.” Trump said Cook spoke to him about this “real problem”.

Meanwhile, giving details of the Gold Card, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said it would cost one million dollar for an individual and two million dollar for a corporation and would involve “full” and “best” vetting to “make sure these people absolutely qualify to be in America”. “Then the company can keep them here, and they have a path to citizenship. Obviously, they have to be perfect people in America, and having passed the vetting. After five years, they'll be available to become citizens,” Lutnick said, adding that then the corporation could put someone else on the card.