Visas and the queue
Golden visa
Also called golden visas, residence by investment, investor residence permit, золотая виза.
Golden visa is a colloquial name for a foreign residence by investment programme that grants residence in the country running it in return for a qualifying investment; it is not a term in United States law, it grants nothing in the United States, and the closest US equivalent is EB-5, which is bought with a real enterprise and ten jobs rather than with a payment.
What it decides
No United States statute, regulation or USCIS policy uses the phrase, so it carries no US legal meaning, and an offering that advertises a US golden visa is describing either EB-5 under 8 U.S.C. 1153(b)(5) or, since September 2025, the Gold Card. What the money buys differs. A golden visa is normally a permit to reside in the granting country, often renewable rather than permanent, and it is measured by the size of the investment. EB-5 gives conditional permanent residence in the United States only after the investor puts $800,000 or $1,050,000 genuinely at risk in a new commercial enterprise and ten full time jobs are created, and the money is not a fee to the government. United States law touches these programmes at exactly one point, and it is a restriction rather than a benefit: 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(E), as amended by section 5902(b) of Public Law 117-263, withholds E treaty trader and treaty investor status from a person who acquired the relevant nationality through a financial investment and has not previously been granted status under that subparagraph, unless that person was also domiciled in the treaty country for a continuous period of not less than 3 years at some point before applying. That clause bites on citizenship by investment, where a passport is bought, not on a residence permit.
Where this is explained properly
Pages here that go into golden visa rather than mentioning it.
Related terms
- EB-5 Immigrant Investor ProgramEB-5 is the employment-based fifth preference immigrant visa category: a foreign national who invests the required capital in a new US commercial enterprise receives permanent residence, granted first on a two year conditional basis, and keeps it by proving that the investment created full-time jobs for at least ten qualifying US workers. It leads to residence, not citizenship.
- Citizenship by investmentCitizenship by investment is a scheme that grants a country's nationality, and its passport, in exchange for a set payment or investment; the United States runs no such scheme, and EB-5 buys conditional permanent residence, never citizenship.
- Gold CardThe Gold Card is an expedited immigrant visa process created by Executive Order 14351 of 19 September 2025, under which an unrestricted gift of $1 million by an individual, or $2 million by a company on an individual's behalf, to the Department of Commerce is treated as evidence of eligibility for an existing EB-1 or EB-2 immigrant visa; it is not a new visa category and it is not EB-5.
- Quebec Immigrant Investor ProgramThe Quebec Immigrant Investor Program is Quebec's investor immigration route: a five year, interest free investment of CAD 1,000,000 that the province guarantees and repays in full, plus a non-refundable CAD 200,000 contribution, buys Quebec selection, while Canada alone decides permanent residence.
- Australian Significant Investor VisaThe Australian Significant Investor Visa was the Significant Investor stream of the Business Innovation and Investment (Provisional) visa, subclass 188: it required a complying significant investment of at least AUD 5,000,000 held for the life of the visa, and it closed permanently to new applications on 31 July 2024.
Checked against primary sources on . Back to the glossary