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In a Fox News interview that aired on Wednesday, Donald Trump admitted that he worries his plan to invent and distribute so-called golden visas to people willing to pay a $5 million fee could cause "unsavory people" to come to the United States.
While he's argued that the "gold visa" proposal would spur investment in the U.S., Trump acknowledged on Fox News that there may be downsides, though he promised to kick out any immigrants if he learns of wrongdoing.
In the interview, Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked Trump if he's "worried about any unsavory people coming in."
“Yeah, I’m worried about unsavory — in which case we’re gonna give ‘em the money back and they get out,” Trump replied. He also said, when pressed, that the visa holders would be "properly vetted" but seemingly started to add a caveat. "You know, when you're talking about a lot of people — I think it's gonna be very successful."
Trump has proposed the gold visas as a juiced-up replacement of the EB-5 visa, which already exists to allow foreign investors to obtain a green card if they invest at least $1.05 million in the U.S. Other countries with similar "golden passports" include Austria, Egypt and Turkey.
The proposal came even as the Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement, targeted legal immigrants for deportation and contracted with El Salvador to send some deportees to a notorious prison complex.
In the interview, Ingraham also asked Trump why U.S. citizenship should be on sale "for any amount of money" and how it fit with his "America First" philosophy. Trump responded that he proposed the idea because he’s “America First,” claiming without evidence that the policy might even bring as many as 1 million new immigrants.
In a recent op-ed for MSNBC, Rotimi Adeoye laid out the moral and ethical objections to the proposal:
In Trump’s vision, citizenship is no longer about building a shared national project; it is an asset reserved for those who can afford it, as it is in countries with “golden visa” programs such as Malta and Cyprus. Being American would become a high-end commodity, available only to the wealthy.
Critics have been outspoken in laying out their worries about this golden visa plan. But the Fox News interview shows that even Trump is concerned that the new visas could be abused and he has no real plan to stop that.