The Late-Night Commercial for Citizenship

 The United States has a program that allows aliens to buy their way into this country.  It is called the EB-5 visa.  Let’s say you are not poor or brown or worried about raising your children in a lawless nation.  [I can relate to this last one, I am fearful of my grandchildren growing up in Trump’s America.  But I digress.]  Let’s say, instead, that you are an outstandingly wealthy person from a predominantly Caucasian country.  With the EB-5 visa you can pony up around $1,000,000 in an infrastructure project or business here in the U.S.  You then create (or maintain) 10 (no, I did not forget to add a zero or two to that number) permanent full-time jobs for qualified U.S. workers.  [Of course, if in the mind of the oligarch, there are no “qualified” American workers, those 10 jobs are waived.]  Done and done, you can then get on a fast track for permanent citizenship.  No muss, no fuss, just come to us.

For example, if I am a Russian oligarch and buy an asphalt company with contracts to pave all of I-80, and retain the employment of ten Americans, I can move to this country and start the paperwork for citizenship with this government’s approval.

Our current President did not think this was the best way to get money into the treasury.  So, in February of this year, he announced his Gold Card Visa program.  It was like the EB-5 visa except for two things: it would cost $5 million and was tax free.  Even after being fast tracked for citizenship, you will not have to pay tax on money earned outside the country if you reside in this country for no more than 270 days each year.  If you have the money to vacation three months a year, you are in tax heaven.  In June, the President gleefully said he had thousands of people on the waiting list to get this card (which looks like a credit card with an ugly old white man’s pictured on the front). 

Well, whether it was the fault of that truly creepy photo or not, it turns out there weren’t as many people lining up for the gold card as was first thought.  In fact, the thing was a bust.  On Friday Trump signed yet another executive order (which is what you do when you don’t know how to pass a bill through Congress) to announce a blue light special on his gold card.  Its cost is now back to the $1 million of the old EB-5 visa.  And in true late-night television fashion there is the obligatory “but wait…”  Trump wants you to know that you will also get residency in record time—shipping and handling billed separately.

If this has an almost desperate sound (like doubling the order of those stackable leftover dishes) you are right.  Forbes reports that investment counselors for ultra wealthy clients call this 80% price cut an admission of failure. Trying to put lipstick of this pig, the Trump card website both invites wealthy aliens to not only take part in the bargain basement sale but also put their names on the waiting list for the upcoming platinum card coming soon.  Bigger, better, and with the now defunct $5 million price tag back in place.  This item is not available in stores. Call now.

Trump also has a third product for just $2 million which allows the alien (our Russian oligarch for example) to transfer access to citizenship from one employee and grant it to another.  All of this without the usual, pesky vetting by our immigration services.  What could possibly go wrong?

I would point out that according to the Constitution, none of this should be allowed without Congressional legislation, but we all know that neither Trump nor the magats give a damn about the laws of this land. 

We do not have a President; we have a carnival barker.  We must keep the faith, and act upon that faith.