Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is involved in Trump’s plan to have people buy their way to American citizenship.
As the Trump administration continues to blatantly ignore court orders and deport thousands of immigrants without justification, Musk’s crew of twentysomething goons is building out a special type of $5 million visa designed to give “high-level people” a “route to citizenship.”
Dubbed “gold cards” by Trump, the visas were first announced in February. Each card sells for $5 million and would replace the E.B.-5 visa program. DOGE is now working with the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to build out the project’s website and application process, The New York Times reported Wednesday. His team consists of Marko Elez (the 25-year-old with a history of racist X posts), 19-year-old Edward Coristine, who publicly goes by “Big Balls,” and the billionaire co-founder of Airbnb.
Elez and Coristine have been meeting with staff at different agencies in charge of the immigration vetting process to determine how to build out their system.
While much of MAGA has pushed to eradicate immigration of any kind, Musk has at times defended immigration—if those coming to the U.S. are college-educated, wealthy, and will comply with his mission to run the country like a private start-up.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has touted the “gold card” program and claimed the government has already made $5 billion off the scheme, even though it doesn’t exist yet.
“Yesterday I sold a thousand,” Lutnick said in a podcast interview last month.
“The idea is, if I was not American, and I lived in any other country, I would buy six—one for me, one for my wife, one for my four kids—because God forbid something happens, I want to be able to go to America, and I want to have the right to go to the airport to go to America,” Lutnick added, foreshadowing a not-so-distant reality where only the ultrawealthy can relocate to Trump’s America.
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