'He’s a mobster': Trump buried over 'sickening' new citizenship proposal

25 February

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a hat after signing an executive order in the Oval Office, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. February 25, 2025.

President Donald Trump is now proposing a revamping of the citizenship process that involves prioritizing the wealthy.

On Tuesday, Trump — with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy at his side — told reporters in the Oval Office that he was planning the roll-out of a new "Trump Gold Card" for immigrants willing to pay for citizenship. According to Lutnick, this would overhaul the EB-5 program for immigrant investors to obtain green cards for legal permanent residency status.

"We're going to be putting a price on that card of about $5 million, and that's going to give you green card privileges," Trump said. "Plus, it's going to be a route to citizenship."

Trump praised his idea as a means of addressing the national debt, insisting the "numbers" behind the proposal are "pretty good."

"As an example, a million cards would be worth $5 trillion. And if you sell 10 million of the cards, that's a total of $50 trillion," he said. "Well, we have $35 trillion in debt. That'd be nice."

Gizmodo reporter Matt Novak, who tweeted the videos of Trump rolling out the plan, likened it to being "a little kid and thinking through about how businesses make money. Why not sell a $5 million taco? Then you can be a millionaire and you only need to sell one taco."

On Bluesky, former Indianapolis Star reporter Mary Beth Schneider lamented the "gold card" proposal, calling it "sickening" that Trump was "selling citizenship for millions." Writer Miles Grant opined that "racism and oligarchy" were the main drivers of the proposal.

"He's a mobster," Georgia State University political science professor Jeff Lazarus wrote. "Everything is transactional, anything can be bought or sold."

"If I had $5 million, I’d rather buy a house in Toronto than become an American," Irish-Canadian journalist Scott D'Agostino wrote.

Trump's proposal also drew skepticism from Scientific American copy editor Kenneth Silber, who wondered: "Who's going to pay $5 million to be a (potential) citizen of a country that's increasingly acting like an overgrown banana republic?"

"There's no way this could go wrong," author Dex Anderson wrote.

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