Aside from war threats in the Middle East, the two biggest domestic public policy challenges in the early summer of 2025 have been the battles over the federal budget for the coming year, and issues relating to the enforcement of our immigration laws. Neglected so far has been a policy option that would help deal with both issues, importantly enhancing federal revenues by opening a new robust market in visas to eligible immigrants, offering them entry into the world’s largest economy as well as a path towards citizenship.
The Trump Administration has already inaugurated a Gold Visa, where, for five million dollars, peaceful and law-abiding individuals can buy permanent residence, and presumably a clear path to citizenship. In its first week, reportedly 70,000 applied for those visas. Suppose 20,000 of the applicants could not get the needed funds or were deemed dangerous on national security grounds. If the other 50,000 bought visas in the next year, some $250 billion would be raised. This unanticipated huge revenue infusion could solve many of the battles both within the precarious Republican congressional majority and its interaction with Democratic opposition. Republicans, for example, could enhance the probability that the 2017 Trump tax cuts will be extended, maybe made permanent. More liberal Republicans and Democrats could ward off or moderate reductions in Medicaid programs currently being discussed.
Arguably better for the nation, if not congressional job security, the funds from visa sales could be dedicated to importantly reducing monstrous federal deficit spending that imperils not only the nation’s social safety net but also the supremacy of the dollar as the world’s dominant currency. That would help delay a fiscal Armageddon that threatens both pensioners and younger Americans facing the consequences of this generation’s grotesque fiscal irresponsibility and low fertility.
Moreover, this nation needs highly productive immigrants, not only for their financial but far more importantly, their considerable human capital. Disproportionately, the nation’s top entrepreneurs are immigrants. Broadcom recently joined the Magnificent Seven top high-tech companies having trillion dollar market valuations, with four of those eight firms run by immigrants such as Elon Musk or Jensen Huang. A considerable body of evidence shows that immigrants on average work more than native born Americans and are disproportionately more entrepreneurial and tech savvy. An aging America desperately needs smart and productive new blood.
For decades, I, along with several other prominent economists, have proposed selling visas in the open market. For example, why not sell 8,000 visas offering permanent residence and potential citizenship on the open market every business day –say 250 days a year, or two million visas annually. Suppose the average price of them is $75,000 –the nation would net $150 billion a year, or potentially $1.5 trillion over the decade long timeframe favored by federal budget overseers. That annual level of population inflow amounts to less than 0.6 percent of current inhabitants, well below historically high previous episodes in our history (say from 1880 to 1914) when immigrant-induced population increases often exceeded one percent annually, which the nation not only absorbed readily but boomed economically.
One highly useful byproduct of market-driven visa sales is that they would provide a good indicator of the world’s perception of the United States as a desirable place to live. We might hear on the news “Visa prices were up today $250 on increased expectations of a tax cut,” or “visa prices dropped $150 today over concerns about damage from Mississippi River flooding.”
Moreover, the volume of visa sales could be altered with changing overall economic conditions –raised during boom periods of low unemployment, but lowered when unemployment rates rose above, say, six percent. The program could also be extended to temporary work permit visa sales, especially to agricultural workers. Farmers could buy visas for foreign born workers coming for a few months to maintain fields and harvest crops, reintroducing in modified form the bracero visa program that was highly successful more than a generation ago.
Let “new blood” invigorate America economically —while simultaneously alleviating seemingly politically intractable fiscal problems.
Richard Vedder is Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at Ohio University, and Senior Fellow at both Unleash Prosperity and the Independent Institute.