Posted on 03/24/2025 9:44:24 AM PDT by John Semmens
This week Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sold 1,000 immigration gold cards for $5 million apiece. Purchasers of these cards can legally immigrate to the United States and be put on a track to become naturalized citizens. Lutnick said "the $5 billion in revenue from this sale and the revenues from additional sales going forward offer another option for reducing the federal government's deficit other than raising taxes on American citizens."
Laura Collins, Director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative, expressed some doubts about the effectiveness of the approach, saying "we currently have eight million job vacancies that need filling. It seems unlikely that folks who can afford to pay $5 million to become legal residents are going to fill these jobs when they move here. Most likely they will buy expensive homes and other luxury goods. I think this will tend to aggravate the labor shortage that already exists."
Lutnick disagreed: "There are tens of millions of Americans who are not in the labor force. Most wealthy people invest their money one way or another. Bringing in more of them will increase the chances for these currently unemployed Americans to get jobs. Weather the new gold card residents directly invest by starting a business or indirectly by putting their funds into stocks, bonds, or banks--either way, more higher paying job opportunities will be created."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) called the gold card idea "just another ploy to enable capitalists to exploit the working class while the Trump Administration fires millions of hard-working government employees in a desperate attempt to punish a key Democrat voting bloc. We should be expropriating the capitalist exploiters of their ill-gotten wealth. Government should own and operate all of the economy's industrial assets. Without the need to earn a profit costs to the consumer would be lower and poverty would be abolished. We have been taking baby steps toward this ideal for more than 100 years. Now, with the courts on our side we can defeat Trump's anti-democratic reforms and install the socialism that Karl Marx predicted would free the working men and women to enjoy total equality."
Immigration Gold Cards can’t get democrats votes but with gold bars now that’s a different story.
These aren’t investor visas, the $5 million is just a fee.
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