During a portion of an interview that took place on Tuesday and was aired on Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” President Donald Trump argued that the gold card visa program he’s pushing for will be “much more popular” than the EB-5 visa program and will help with debt and stated “generally, people that can pay $5 million are going to be job producers,” and the visa will also be bought by companies to hire immigrants who are top graduates from top schools.
Host Laura Ingraham said, “The EB-5 visas, you’ve spoken about them and the fraud and abuse of that process over years. They’re basically immigrant investment visas, $800,000, you can get a fast track to a green card, you don’t have to speak English, you don’t have to have a special skill. But it’s very popular. It’s a big long line of people waiting to get these.”
Trump then cut in to say, “We’re going to have one that’s much more popular.”
Ingraham then asked, “But the golden visa which you also — you’re obviously backing, probably is going to have to go through Congress. We’ll see if they actually do that. But, a $5 million investment from a foreigner coming into the United States, why should our citizenship be purchased for any amount of money, especially given the fact that you’re America first, given the types of people who have $5 million to throw down for a visa or for a permanent residency?”
Trump answered, “That’s why, because I’m America first. Because, at $5 million, you’re getting a lot of things, but you’re getting $5 million. Let’s say we sell a million of them, that’s $5 trillion. We are now an unbelievably successful country, paying down tremendous amounts of debt. It’s all going to pay down debt. We’re going to have very little debt. But if you did — think of it, if you did $5 million, now, generally, people that can pay $5 million are going to be job producers, okay? They’re going to be successful, they’re going to produce jobs. But here’s another thing: Apple comes to me, a lot of companies come to me, they say, sir, we just made a deal to hire the number one student at the Wharton School of Finance or at Harvard Business School or anything else or MIT or Stanford or any of them, but they’re going to throw them out of the country the day after graduation. They’ll buy these.”
Trump also stated there will be proper vetting, but he is “worried about unsavory, in which case, we’re going to give them the money back and they get out.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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