Dozens of countries around the world offer some sort of citizenship by investment programme, including several in Europe, like Portugal, which gives “golden visas”, or permanent residency for foreigners who invest €500,000 ($524,000) into a qualifying fund.

Trump said companies would use the golden visa programme to hire non-citizens to work for them in the US.

“We have to be able to get people in the country, and we want people that are productive people,” Trump said.

Typically, green card holders in the US can apply for citizenship after five years.

Trump suggested revenue from the high-priced visas could be used to pay off US debt.

Lutnick said that the initiative will replace the EB-5 visa, which gives permanent residency to some foreigners who invest around $1m and create at least 10 full-time jobs in the US.

Saying the EB-5 programme was “poorly overseen and poorly executed”, Lutnick said the golden visas would be an improvement.

“We’re going to make sure they’re wonderful world-class global citizens,” Lutnick said of future gold card applicants.

It was not immediately clear how the government would select recipients, if there were exclusions, or if there would be any cap on how many are issued.

During the fiscal year of 2024, the State Department issued over 12,000 EB-5 visas, a record high for the programme.