Will Indian Graduates of Top U.S. Universities be Hired on Gold Card Visas

Will companies in the U.S. pay $5 million for a gold card visa to hire Indian graduates of top U.S. universities

(Image courteys Wikimedia Commons.)

February 26, 2025

President Donald Trump’s plan to issue gold card visas is being widely covered by the media in India, given the large number of Indian professionals eager to find jobs in the U.S. “I get calls from companies wanting to hire the No. 1 student at Harvard, Wharton, or Yale, but then they’re forced to leave because of our outdated immigration system,” Trump said at a press conference today, The Times of India reported. “With Gold Cards, these brilliant minds stay here.”

The gold card visas, which will cost $5 million each, are expected to grant permanent residency and a potential path to U.S. citizenship. In two weeks, the Trump administration expects to start accepting applications from wealthy individuals as well as businesses for the visas. Companies like Apple, Trump said at the press conference, "can go and buy a gold card" to hire graduates of the top U.S. universities, who are from India and other foreign countries.

The gold cards are expected to replace the current EB-5 green card immigrant investor program. Each year, 10,000 foreigners are given this permanent residency visa for investing $1 million and creating ten full-time jobs in the U.S.

The gold cards are " going to sell like crazy. It's a bargain," Trump stated. "If we sell 10 million, which is possible, 10 million highly productive people coming in ... that's $50 trillion. That means our debt ($35 billion) is totally paid off, and we have $15 trillion above that."

Trump’s gold card visas will likely attract thousands of wealthy applicants, especially from China, India, and Latin American countries. Whether it will attract even 250,000 wealthy foreigners, currently in line for the EB-5 green card program, and thereby reduce the U.S. budget deficit by $1 trillion, is unknown.

This is because several countries, including in Western Europe, already compete to attract foreign investors by offering golden visas, or permanent residency, at about a tenth of the cost of the U.S. golden visa. In Portugal, for instance, foreigners who invest $524,000 secure a five-year residency visa, during which they can apply for permanent residency and citizenship. Other Western European countries selling similar visas to foreign investors include Italy, Greece, and Malta. In the United Arab Emirates, foreigners investing $540,000 are given permanent residency, but for only ten years.

Also, it is not clear why Apple and other companies in the U.S. may want to pay $5 million for a golden visa to hire Indian and other foreign graduates of top American universities. Companies can hire foreigners on practical training visas for three years, followed by six more years on H-1B temporary work visas, and also sponsor them for permanent residency, or green cards – in all costing less than $15,000, mainly in legal fees, at times paid by the employees.

In addition, big American technology companies have some of their key technical operations located in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and France. They can hire the best engineers and PhDs from the top local universities in these countries - without the need for U.S. work visas. For instance, the head office of Alphabet’s artificial intelligence operations, Google DeepMind, is in London.

Meanwhile, technology companies in the U.S. are laying off thousands of employees, in part due to the rapidly expanding use of artificial intelligence tools. So far in 2025, about 14,000 employees have been laid off by 59 U.S. technology companies, according to Layoffs.Fyi; in 2024 there were around 152,000 technology jobs cut.

This year’s job cuts include 3,600 jobs at Facebook parent Meta, 1,000 at Blue Origin, a space venture founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as well as at Microsoft and Workday. “Organizational and workforce adjustments are a necessary and regular part of managing our business,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CRN in an email.

Companies in the U.S. appear to manage the size of their engineering and other technical skilled staff largely by combining the supply of Indian graduates of U.S. universities and the hiring flexibility provided by the practical training and and H-1B work visas.

The swing skilled labor capacity provided by foreigners is evident from hiring and lay off data. In 2022, for instance, the top 30 H-1B employers hired more than 34,000 new H-1B workers, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. In 2022, and the first quarter of 2023, the top 30 H-1B employers also laid off at least 85,000 employees on H-1B visas.

Most of the technical professionals on H-1B visas, who are laid off, are Indians, including those waiting in line for a green card. In fact, the number of Indians, on temporary work visas, who are effectively laid off is much higher.

For many Indians on OPT visas, employment in the U.S. ends after two or three years, or after six years for H-1B visa holders. Such job cuts, which likely total several thousand each year, are typically not disclosed by employers on technical grounds that an employee’s work visa had expired.

The practical training and temporary work visas offer businesses in the U.S. the flexibility to easily manage skilled labor costs, through hiring and layoffs of foreign labor. So, very few businesses may want to sponsor even highly talented foreign graduates for permanent work visas, such as the gold card visas, even if available for free.

The Times of India noted, “the world will be watching to see if Trump’s Gold Card truly becomes a ticket to the American Dream —or simply another political gamble.”

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