Eighty Thousand Golden Visas Were Promised. One Has Been Delivered.

Executive Order 14351, signed September 19, 2025, created the "Gold Card": pay the U.S. government a $1 million personal gift — $2 million if a corporation pays on your behalf — and get a national-interest waiver toward an EB-1 or EB-2 green card, processed through "an expedited process, to the extent consistent with law."▸ The order gave Commerce, State, and Homeland Security 90 days to stand it up. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick did the selling: nearly 70,000 people on a waitlist by June, then, at the December 2025 launch, a prediction that the government would issue 80,000 cards and raise more than $100 billion within the year. Asked days later how sales were going, Lutnick told a live press event the program had moved "$1 billion 300 million worth in a matter of a couple of days," without ever specifying what "sold" meant — no card had been approved yet for anyone to buy.

The real numbers surfaced in litigation.▸ The American Association of University Professors and a group of immigrant researchers sued DHS, the State Department, and Commerce in February 2026, arguing the program converts immigrant visas into a "pay-to-play" commodity in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and the Immigration and Nationality Act — a case now known as AAUP v. DHS, No. 1:26-cv-00300 (D.D.C.). In a sworn declaration filed April 28, 2026, a USCIS official put a number on four months of the program: 338 people had submitted a request, 165 of them had actually paid the required $15,000 processing fee, only 59 had gone on to file the Form I-140G petition the visa itself requires, and — as Lutnick told a House Appropriations subcommittee five days earlier — exactly one had been approved. "They have approved, recently, one person, and there are hundreds in the queue," he said, describing the vetting as "the most serious ... in the history of government." DHS's own filing in the same lawsuit undercut the "expedited" pitch directly, stating that Gold Card applicants "will not necessarily have their petitions adjudicated faster than any non-Gold-Card applicant."

At the December pace Lutnick promised, 80,000 approvals would have arrived well within a year.▸ At the pace the government itself has reported to a federal court, 165 people have paid to get in line in four months and one has come out the other end.

The same court declaration answers a second question: how much of the government's own capacity is behind this.▸ Between December 1, 2025 and February 28, 2026, six USCIS adjudicators logged 141.5 hours working Gold Card requests. Over that identical window, 275 adjudicators logged more than 55,000 hours processing the standard EB-1 and EB-2 categories the Gold Card borrows its legal authority from — a combined 167,564 receipts in fiscal year 2025 (51,371 EB-1, 116,193 EB-2), according to the same declaration, as summarized by immigration law firm Mona Shah & Partners Global. A dedicated team exists; it is a fraction of the size of the one that runs the visa categories the program rides on.

What happens to the money is its own open question.▸ The executive order itself says gifts go into a Treasury fund that Commerce is to "use ... to promote commerce and American industry, consistent with the statutory authorities of the Department of Commerce." Asked directly by Rep. Grace Meng how the $1 million gifts would actually be spent, Lutnick's answer was narrower: "That will be determined by the administration."

Figures reflect a federal court declaration and congressional testimony current through April 28, 2026; the underlying lawsuit, AAUP v. DHS, was still pending and application, fee, and approval counts may have moved since this reporting.