Trump Gold Card Visa Stalls: Only 338 Applied Before June 29 Deadline

The Trump Gold Card visa has one final bureaucratic hurdle left, and the clock runs out on June 29, 2026. That is the day public comments close on Form I-140G, the petition every Gold Card applicant will need, after which the Office of Management and Budget can clear the form and let the program open for real. Immigration practitioners now expect a full launch as early as July.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — 10 June 2026

The notice, published in the Federal Register on May 29, is the second and final comment round for the form under the Paperwork Reduction Act. The first 60-day window, opened in March, drew a grand total of five comments. For a program the White House once touted as a trillion-dollar idea, that silence says plenty.

Buried in the same notice is a number nobody at the podium has repeated. USCIS estimates 1,520 individual petitioners and 72 corporate petitioners per year. Not a million. Not the “thousands a day” of the early sales pitch. Fewer than 1,600 buyers annually, by the government’s own math.

The Gold Card Numbers Tell an Awkward Story

Let’s be blunt: the rollout has not gone to plan. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Congress in late April that exactly one Gold Card had been approved. The Washington Post, citing Department of Homeland Security figures, reported in early May that 338 people had applied and 165 had paid the $15,000 processing fee. CNBC ran the same story under a blunter headline: the card has failed to catch on among the world’s wealthy.

Compare that with the early claims of explosive demand and the gap is hard to ignore. The numbers don’t lie. A product aimed at the global rich is competing against residency programs that cost a tenth as much and ask far less of your capital.

Why the Trump Gold Card Visa Is Still Not Fully Open

The program traces back to Executive Order 14351, signed on September 19, 2025. The application portal at trumpcard.gov has been collecting applications and fees for months. What it cannot do yet is finish the job, because the underlying petition, Form I-140G, is still working through the Paperwork Reduction Act process that every new federal form must survive.

The 60-day notice ran from March 10. The 30-day notice landed on May 29 under Docket USCIS-2025-0502, and comments close June 29. Once OMB signs off, USCIS can adjudicate petitions at scale. Several immigration law firms tracking the docket expect the green light in July 2026, though OMB is under no deadline to move that fast.

Here’s the kicker: the form treats the Gold Card as an employment-based immigrant visa, drawing on existing EB-1 and EB-2 categories rather than a new visa class created by Congress. Lawyers for wealthy clients have flagged that shortcut as the program’s soft underbelly. An executive order can be litigated, amended, or revoked. A statute cannot be undone by the next administration’s signature. We made the same point when the first Gold Card website went live a year ago, and nothing in the paperwork since has changed it.

From a $5 Million Pitch to a $1 Million Gift

The original announcement in February 2025 priced the card at $5 million. The version that survived contact with reality asks individuals for a $1 million “gift” to the US government, with corporate sponsors paying $2 million per worker they sponsor. The $15,000 processing fee is non-refundable either way.

That repricing matters. At $5 million, the card was the most expensive residency product on earth. At $1 million, it sits in the same bracket as the UK’s new invite-only investor route and the upper tier of European golden visas, except the money is a donation, not an investment you can recover. A gift is gone forever. An investment can come back.

One more wrinkle for Americans watching from abroad: US citizens and green card holders remain taxable on worldwide income no matter where they live, and any wealthy foreigner taking the Gold Card walks into that same worldwide tax net on day one. Plenty of wealthy Americans are heading the other direction for exactly that reason.

What the Trump Gold Card Visa Signals for Investor Migration

Washington entering the golden visa business changes the global conversation. The EU is squeezing citizenship-by-investment programs while the US, the UK, and New Zealand court the same wealthy applicants those programs serve. Mobility is becoming a product that big economies sell too, just at a higher price and with more strings attached. The ultra-rich treat residency options as insurance, and they shop around.

The thin Gold Card uptake fits a wider pattern we have covered all spring, from Indonesia’s stalling golden visa to Europe’s shrinking menu of programs. Demand for a second residency is real and growing. Demand for overpriced, donation-based products with unresolved legal foundations is not. Bottom line: the market keeps voting for cheaper, statute-backed second residency options with clear rules.

The Trump Gold Card visa will probably clear its June 29 hurdle, and the administration will declare victory. Watch the adjudication numbers in August instead of the press conference in July. That is where the truth of this program lives.