IN THIS GUIDE · A household counting the cost of a programme whose arithmetic is per person
Start with the GOLD CARD eligibility and application overview
Which way the money moves, and what this is not
The programme involves a gift made by the applicant to the U.S. government. Nothing is given to the applicant by the government, and the frequent description of it as a government grant or an award reverses the transaction entirely. It is also not an investment. An investor in an immigrant investment programme places capital into a commercial enterprise, keeps an interest in that enterprise and may lose it if the business fails; a gift is transferred outright and there is nothing to hold, sell or recover. Because the two are routinely spoken about in the same breath, the distinction is worth stating plainly at the start of any conversation, since almost every subsequent misunderstanding follows from confusing them.
The sequence: fee first, vetting, then the gift
As the programme is published, a processing fee of fifteen thousand United States dollars is paid per person and is not refundable. Vetting follows. Only after that stage does the gift arise, in the published amount of one million United States dollars where an individual is making it, or two million where a corporate sponsor makes it on someone’s behalf. The order matters because the money that is spent first is the money that is not returned if the answer is no. Anyone considering it should know exactly what is being risked at each step rather than treating the whole thing as a single transaction with a single outcome.
A household is counted person by person
Each accompanying spouse or unmarried child under twenty-one adds a further processing fee and a further gift of one million United States dollars. That is the arithmetic that surprises families, because a figure quoted for one applicant is often heard as a figure for a household. It also means that a child’s age is not a detail. A daughter of nineteen can be counted as an accompanying child on these terms; a son of twenty-two cannot be an accompanying unmarried child under twenty-one at all and would need an independent basis of his own, whether through study, employment or another route entirely. Ages should be checked against the expected timeline, not against today’s date.
It runs on existing classifications, and its terms belong to the government
The programme operates through the existing employment-based immigrant classifications, the first and second preference categories commonly called EB-1 and EB-2, rather than creating a new category of its own, which means the requirements of the underlying classification continue to apply and are not displaced by the payment. That is a significant point for anyone who has been told the payment replaces qualification. Equally significant is that the terms, amounts and procedures are set and revised by the United States government and are published officially. They should be re-verified from the official programme page immediately before any money moves, and again if there is a gap of months between the decision and the transfer, because a figure quoted accurately last year may not be the figure in force today.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.