A coalition of immigrants, labor unions and academic organizations on Tuesday sued President Trump over his “gold card” initiative, arguing that a program offering visas for cash takes coveted spots away from scientists, doctors and others whose presence would benefit the United States.
The program, effectively an expedited visa for which applicants are required to pay more than $1 million, was opened to the public in December, when the Trump administration debuted a website featuring a gold card with Mr. Trump’s face on it and promising to “unlock life in America.”
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, argues that the program fundamentally changes the way a limited number of visas are dispersed by the government, prioritizing “wealth over intellect or ability” and bypassing Congress in the process.
“Rather than reserving those visas for the world’s best and brightest, the Gold Card program converts those visas into revenue-generating commodities sold to the highest bidder,” the lawsuit argues.
It asks a judge to find that the program is unlawful and to block its implementation. Mr. Trump and a number of his agency heads, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are named as defendants, as are a number of agencies.
Mr. Trump created the program in September, signing an executive order meant to facilitate the entry of immigrants who “have demonstrated their ability and desire to advance the interests of the United States by voluntarily providing a significant financial gift.”
According to the website, applicants who were approved would receive EB-1 or EB-2 visas. For decades, EB-1s, sometimes referred to as the “Einstein visa,” have been reserved by law for immigrants of “extraordinary ability”; EB-2s have been reserved for those of “exceptional ability.” Such visas have fixed caps, meaning that a limited number are issued each year.
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“If you look at the statute, you can tell Congress made some pretty deliberate decisions about how they wanted to structure the availability of these visas,” said Sarah Wilson, a partner at the law firm Colombo & Hurd and one of the lawyers who brought the suit.
She added that the statute sorts merit-based visas into categories, including the EB-1s and EB-2s. “None of those categories include ‘give us a million dollars,’” she said.
As the suit notes, a separate visa category, EB-5, was expressly created by Congress to spur investment in the United States. That visa category requires applicants to invest about $1 million in a new commercial enterprise for at least two years, but it also has other, more stringent requirements, including specifications as to where such investments must be made.
The introduction of the gold card program is one of a number of sweeping changes the Trump administration has made to the legal immigration system in recent months. In January, the State Department implemented a policy suspending the approval of visas for people from 75 countries, most of which have significant nonwhite populations. A separate lawsuit filed in Manhattan on Monday took aim at that change. The administration’s policies for asylum seekers and refugees have also grown more restrictive.
Plaintiffs in the suit include the American Association of University Professors, as well as individual professors who research such varied subjects as treatments for retinal diseases, wearable technology for pain management, cancer biology and electrochemistry.
It is unclear how many people have signed up for the gold card program. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was also named as a defendant in Tuesday’s suit, told Reuters in December that 10,000 people had signed up during a “pre-registration period” and that he expected to sell thousands of the cards and raise “billions of dollars.” The same month, Mr. Trump said that more than $1 billion worth of the cards had already been sold.
Tuesday’s lawsuit argues that the power to raise revenue lies exclusively with Congress.
The rapper Nicki Minaj last month appeared to identify herself as one of the more high-profile recipients of a gold card, posting about the card on social media. A White House official told The New York Times that the card was not a “visa document,” but rather simply a “memento.”
Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in the New York region for The Times. He is focused on political influence and its effect on the rule of law in the area’s federal and state courts.
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