Mint Quick Edit | Trump’s $5 million price tag on a US visa is no big shock

Amid the deportation of illegal immigrants from the US, President Donald Trump has come up with a ‘gold card’ visa plan that will give immigrants a US green card with an eventual pathway to citizenship. 

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To get this card, one must cough up $5 million, a kind of gateway fee to access the American dream. This route will replace the current EB-5 visa scheme, under which eligibility for a green card depends on investing $1 million in a US business that either creates or preserves at least 10 jobs there. 

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In effect, Trump has raised the bar even for the rich looking to resettle in America. The country has always welcomed the wealthy. Its leader has simply turned it into a cash transaction. 

Perhaps paths to citizenship being hawked so openly should not surprise anyone. Making America “great again”, the president’s avowed mission, seems mostly about raking in as much money as possible. 

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Romantic notions of the US being a haven of human liberty need to be cast aside. If anything, it is signalling that its guarantee of the right to “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” is just another commodity. Those tempted to buy that card should go for it before its intrinsic value drops.