Green Cards (US)

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    Trump’s ‘Gold Card’ Set Off Panic in an Unexpected Place: Real Estate

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    The president initially said his $5 million green card alternative would replace a visa for foreign investors that has become a favorite financing tool of major developers.President Trump’s plan to sell green cards for $5 million each, a program he is calling a “gold card,” has largely been met with a shrug. It’s not clear exactly how the program would work, if it’s legal or how many potential immigrants would really pay $5 million for a path to U.S. citizenship.But in a niche area of dealmaking, alarm bells are blaring.Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said on Tuesday that the plan to effectively sell green cards would replace the EB-5 investor visa, a favorite source of funding for major real estate projects.Massive developments — from New York’s Hudson Yards to the San Francisco Shipyard to, yes, Trump Plaza in Jersey City — have been financed in part by overseas investors applying to the EB-5 program, which grants permanent U.S. residence. Such investors are motivated by a green card, not by maximizing returns, and so for developers their capital tends to be less expensive than borrowing money from a typical commercial lender.The real estate company owned by the family of Trump’s son-in-law, Kushner Capital, drew scrutiny for its use of EB-5 funding during the first Trump administration.Overall, the EB-5 program does not bring in a lot of money — about $4 billion last year in the context of the $28 trillion U.S. economy — but it represents a huge profit bump for a small but powerful political contingency: major real estate developers. They are not likely to see EB-5 killed without a fight.“Cheap capital is the crack cocaine to the real estate industry and probably every other industry,” said Matt Gordon, the C.E.O. of E3iG, which advises both foreign investment-based visa applicants and U.S. companies seeking funding.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Los inmigrantes en todo EE. UU. se preparan para las medidas de Trump

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      La promesa del presidente electo de llevar a cabo deportaciones masivas ha empujado a los inmigrantes a buscar medidas de protección y asesoramiento.El presidente electo Donald Trump ha prometido reducir drásticamente la inmigración, tanto legal como ilegal, y aumentar las deportaciones desde el primer día.Los inmigrantes se apresuran a adelantarse a la ofensiva.Los residentes nacidos en el extranjero han estado saturando las líneas telefónicas de los abogados de inmigración. Están abarrotando las reuniones informativas organizadas por organizaciones sin fines de lucro. Y están tomando todas las medidas posibles para protegerse de las medidas radicales que Trump ha prometido emprender tras su toma de posesión el 20 de enero.“Gente que debería estar asustada está viniendo, y gente que está bien con una green card se está apresurando a venir”, dijo Inna Simakovsky, abogada de inmigración en Columbus, Ohio, quien añadió que su equipo se ha visto desbordado por las consultas. “Todo el mundo tiene miedo”, dijo.Las personas con tarjeta de residencia permanente, o green card, quieren convertirse en ciudadanos lo antes posible. Las personas que tienen un estatus legal precario o entraron ilegalmente en el país se apresuran a solicitar asilo, porque incluso si la petición es débil, tener un caso pendiente los protegería —con los protocolos actuales— de la deportación. Las personas que tienen una relación con algún ciudadano estadounidense están tramitando su matrimonio con rapidez, lo que les da derecho a solicitar la green card.En total, hay unos 13 millones de personas con residencia legal permanente. Y se calcula que había 11,3 millones de personas indocumentadas en 2022, la última cifra disponible.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Says He Would Give Green Cards to Foreign College Students After Graduation

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      Donald J. Trump said he would push for a program that would automatically give green cards to foreign college students in America after they graduate, a reversal from restrictions he enacted as president on immigration by high-skilled workers and students to the United States.Appearing with the host David Sacks, a Silicon Valley investor who backs the former president’s 2024 campaign, on a podcast that aired Thursday, Mr. Trump repeated his frequent criticism of high levels of immigration as an “invasion of our country.” He was then pressed by Jason Calacanis, another investor who hosts the podcast, to “promise us you will give us more ability to import the best and brightest around the world to America.”“I do promise, but I happen to agree,” Mr. Trump said, adding “what I will do is — you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country, and that includes junior colleges.”Mr. Trump suggested that he had wanted to enact such a policy while in office but “then we had to solve the Covid problem.” The Trump administration invoked the pandemic to enact many of the immigration restrictions that officials had wanted to put in place earlier in Mr. Trump’s term.Mr. Trump also lamented “stories where people graduated from a top college or from a college, and they desperately wanted to stay here, they had a plan for a company, a concept, and they can’t — they go back to India, they go back to China, they do the same basic company in those places. And they become multibillionaires.” Mr. Trump’s comments stood in contrast to the immigration policy he adopted while in office and were a direct overture to wealthy business leaders whom he is courting as donors and supporters of his campaign. Mr. Sacks hosted a fund-raiser this month for the former president in San Francisco, the beating heart of the liberal tech industry, that raised about $12 million for Mr. Trump’s campaign.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Citizens Push Biden to Help Undocumented Spouses Obtain Green Cards

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      The White House is weighing relief for immigrants who crossed the border unlawfully but are eligible for green cards through marriage to U.S. citizens.When Ashley de Azevedo married in 2012, she knew that her U.S. citizenship would make her husband, an immigrant from Brazil, eligible for a green card. What she didn’t realize was that to obtain permanent residency, he would need to return to Brazil for 10 years because he had entered the United States illegally.“It was a devastating reality,” Ms. Azevedo, 38 said. “I was pregnant, and he would miss out on years of our child’s life.”So Mr. Azevedo stayed in the United States, vulnerable to deportation but with his wife and his son, who’s 12.Now, a policy under consideration by the Biden administration could provide Mr. Azevedo and other undocumented spouses with a path to permanent residency that would not force them to leave the United States.Calls for such a move have been growing in some quarters and could give President Biden a political boost in battleground states with large immigrant populations. But the idea is drawing sharp criticism from some Republicans and immigration hawks, who regard it as an abuse of executive authority.Word of the proposal came just days after the administration took long-expected action to make it much harder to seek asylum, which had become an all but certain path for remaining in the United States and helped drive record levels of migration in recent years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More