The administration’s pay-to-immigrate scheme has produced exactly one approval. The post-mortem matters less than what comes next: the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 sunsets in less than a year and a half, and there are real lessons here Congress can use.
Matthew Gordon, Esq. | E3 Legal Advisors PLLC | April 29, 2026
According to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, notwithstanding having 70,000 people signed up on the “waiting list,” only a single visa has been granted. This is especially noteworthy as the visa was promoted on more than a dozen occasions, not only by the Commerce Secretary, but by POTUS himself.
The lackluster results so far are far from surprising. The Gold Visa is replete with conceptual and structural defects (for a more fulsome discussion, see The Trump Gold Visa is Here, and Boy, I’m Confused (December 12, 2025)):
- No statutory basis. The President cannot create new visa categories. Congress can. The Gold Visa relies on shoehorning petitioners into INA § 203(b)(1)(A) (EB-1) or § 203(b)(2)(B) (EB-2) via the new I-140G form.
- Wrong square peg, wrong round hole. EB-1 and EB-2 require “extraordinary” or “exceptional” ability — concepts with decades of precedent. A $1 million payment to the Department of Commerce doesn’t change the adjudicatory standard. Rich is not extraordinary.
- Priced per head. The $1 million is per applicant, not per petition. For a family of four, that’s $4 million (not including filing fees) — versus a single EB-5 investment that covers the principal investor, spouse, and unmarried children under 21.
- No source-of-funds shortcut. The I-140G demands the same source-of-funds rigor as the I-526E. So the only thing the premium price buys is faster processing — supposedly.
- Backlog problem. The visa categories upon which the Gold Visa relies remain retrogressed for Chinese and Indian nationals. The visa category has to be current. So the Gold Visa adds nothing for the populations most likely to want it.
- Tail risk. With no statutory underpinning, a future administration can invalidate every approval issued under it. Anyone paying $1 million for an immigration benefit that exists only as long as one White House says so is making an interesting bet.
The Silver Lining Worth More than Gold
Even an abject failure can contain a useful idea. If there was nothing we could take from the Gold Visa, it wouldn’t be worth writing this piece, even if only for the opportunity to produce a fun AI-generated political cartoon. The Gold Visa identified, however clumsily, possibilities for improvement to the EB-5 program. Wealthy consumers always want a true premium path: where speed, certainty, and product quality realign the value proposition.
In 17 months, the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 (RIA) is set to expire. That sunset lands September 30, 2027 — roughly 13 months before the November 2028 presidential election. It should be an interesting exercise to try moving immigration legislation through the first post-Trump election cycle in more than a decade. More likely than not, we’ll get a clean extension for a year, just like in the good old days before the RIA. Either during this legislative cycle or the next, it would be a shame if Congress didn’t take up the mantle (and do its job for a change) and pass meaningful legislation that improves on what the RIA started. Shortly, we’ll publish some ideas about what the RIA got right, what it got wrong, and where Congress should go from here. For now, here is what the Gold Visa episode can teach us.
What EB-5 Should Borrow from the Gold Visa
- Build a true premium lane. The RIA gave us a partial premium path — rural projects get faster adjudication and a lower investment minimum. That’s a start. A full premium tier could go further: at, say, $5 million, the investor gets super-priority processing (30–60 days) regardless of project type.
- Get the most bang for the policy buck. Critically — and unlike the Gold Visa — the capital should all run through EB-5 as an investment in a job-creating commercial enterprise. The capital is far more valuable for building U.S. businesses than funding the federal toilet paper budget. Since its inception, the EB-5 program has driven more than $50 billion in foreign direct investment to U.S. businesses and supported the creation of more than 1.35 million American jobs (IIUSA, 2023). In the 2016–2019 window alone, the program contributed an estimated $184 billion to U.S. GDP and supported $122 billion in U.S. wages (IIUSA Economic Impact Study). If the effects on the US economy of new investment capital hold, every $5 million in EB-5 capital should generate roughly $12 million in GDP contribution (more than 2X) and supports more than 110 jobs. Money coming in through the Gold Visa only has one-half to one-quarter of the impact on the US Economy compared to foreign money that flows to private US industry (like through the EB-5 program).
- Cover the family for one price. The Gold Visa felt cheapened by charging per head — even for kids. EB-5 has always treated the principal investor’s spouse and unmarried children under 21 as part of the package. Keep it that way. Any premium tier should follow the same rule: one investment, one family.
- Country cap relief for the premium tier. One of the single biggest barriers for Chinese and Indian investors (who make up a majority of the visa-based investment market) is the per-country numerical cap, as retrogression or even the fear of it, has a chilling effect on the investment decision. If we can’t get relief for the EB-5 program at large, at least do it for this group.
- Optional tax treatment. Let the investor sit on non-immigrant status — and not pay U.S. tax on worldwide income — so long as they spend less than 180 days per year in the United States. This aligns the visa with how genuinely mobile high-net-worth investors actually live, and avoids forcing them to choose between U.S. residency and tax efficiency. Done right, it can be revenue-positive: more investors, more capital deployed, more jobs.
- Option pivot to adjustment of status. Allow the premium tier to enter the country and then adjust at their leisure.
- Grant automatic travel parole. Hopefully, with only a one or two-month processing time, this will be less of an issue, but the whole concept of needing advance parole while the adjustment of status is pending is silly.
As IIUSA gathers in Washington, people should think about where we are and where we should be going. September 2027 is fast approaching. The hallmark of a mature and efficient legal system is consistency. After years of extensions, lapses, and fits and starts, we’ve just had a five-year run with the RIA. Let’s all make sure the EB-5 Program remains available to sponsors and investors alike and gets better for the future.
© 2026 Matthew Gordon, E3 Legal Advisors PLLC. This blog post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.