A year after it was trumpeted as a fast lane to US citizenship, the Trump administration's "gold card" visa has produced exactly one winner, CBS News reports. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told a House subcommittee Thursday that just a single applicant has been approved since the program opened in December, though he said "hundreds" are waiting in line. He said the final rules were only recently hammered out with the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the program, and described the screening as "the most serious … in the history of government."
The visa offers wealthy foreigners residency in exchange for a $1 million (or more) payment to the US government, plus $15,000 in processing fees. Trump pitched it last year as an accelerated route to legal status and a new revenue stream; a government site promotes residency approvals in "record time." Pressed by Rep. Grace Meng on where the $1 million checks will actually go, he said only that the funds would support "the betterment" of the country—with specific uses to be decided by the administration. As the AP reports, Lutnick's announcement also appeared to be at odds with his claim in December that the country had already sold $1.3 billion "worth" of the visas in days, but Lutnick did not address that apparent discrepancy Thursday.
Lutnick declined to share details about the lone successful applicant, but Bloomberg reports Jeffrey Chao, the Chinese founder of tech company TP-Link, has applied for one of the cards. Rapper Nicki Minaj got one for free earlier this year, though apparently the administration later said it was simply a "memento" and not a visa, the Hill reported at the time.
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