The American Dream has finally been appraised by the ultimate arbiter of tacky luxury, and it turns out the entry fee is sitting in the bargain bin. Donald Trump, a man whose personal brand is 'gold-leafed desperation,' has looked at the United States’ current immigration policy and realized that the 'Golden Visa' is significantly under-priced. In a world where everything is a transaction, the former president has hit upon the only truth he has ever truly understood: value is entirely subjective, and the American passport is currently being sold at a Dollar Store discount. The EB-5 visa program, that delightful loophole for the global elite to buy their way into the land of the free, is apparently not extracting enough pound-of-flesh from the world’s aspiring plutocrats. Trump doesn’t want your tired, your poor, or your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; he wants your liquid assets, your offshore accounts, and your willingness to overpay for the privilege of living in a crumbling empire.

Let us deconstruct the sheer, unadulterated cynicism of this realization. For years, the political discourse in this country has been a performative theater of cruelty and virtue signaling. On the Right, we have the moronic obsession with physical barriers—walls that can be defeated by a sufficiently tall ladder or a particularly motivated breeze—all designed to keep out the very labor force that keeps their corporate donors’ margins high. On the Left, we have the performative weeping over the 'huddled masses,' a sentiment that usually evaporates the moment those masses move into a zip code with a high concentration of artisanal sourdough bakeries. But Trump, in his blunt, transactional idiocy, has bypassed the pretense. He isn't interested in the 'merit' of the immigrant’s character or their potential to contribute to the social fabric. He understands that in late-stage capitalism, 'merit' is simply another word for 'net worth.' If you have a billion dollars, you are inherently virtuous; if you are fleeing a war zone with nothing but a backpack, you are a 'burden.'

The EB-5 program currently requires an investment of roughly $800,000 to $1.05 million. To a normal human being, that is a life-changing sum. To the 'uber-rich' Trump is courting, it is the price of a mid-sized parking spot in Lower Manhattan or a particularly ugly piece of digital NFT art. The fact that this 'Golden Visa' is under-priced is the only part of the Trumpian worldview that actually aligns with reality. If the United States is going to sell its soul, it should at least get a decent return on investment. We are, after all, a nation that has replaced its civic religion with a worship of the stock ticker. Why should our immigration policy be any different? By suggesting that we should only want the 'uber-rich,' Trump is merely saying the quiet part loud: the United States is no longer a republic; it is a distressed asset, and we are looking for a high-net-worth individual to buy the naming rights.

This isn't just about money, of course; it's about the total collapse of the concept of national identity. When citizenship becomes a commodity, the 'nation' becomes a country club. The border isn't a line on a map; it's a paywall. The hypocrisy of the Republican base, which claims to value 'sovereignty' while their leader suggests selling that sovereignty to the highest foreign bidder, is breathtaking. They hate the 'globalist elite' until that elite shows up with a checkbook large enough to fund a new stadium or a luxury resort. Meanwhile, the Democrats will undoubtedly recoil in horror, clutching their copies of Emma Lazarus’s poetry, while carefully ensuring that their own investment portfolios remain untroubled by the actual presence of the poor people they claim to champion. Both sides are engaged in a race to the bottom, arguing over who gets to hold the velvet rope while the house burns down.

Historically, empires have always sold off their perks when the treasury ran dry and the legions got restless. We are simply repeating the cycle with better marketing. The 'Golden Visa' is the 21st-century version of buying a Roman consulship. It is the ultimate admission that we have nothing left to offer the world except a safe place to park capital and a legal system that favors the highest bidder. Trump’s desire to raise the price of admission is the final, logical step in the transformation of the American Dream into a luxury subscription service. If you can’t afford the Tier 1 ‘Citizen Plus’ package, you’re just an extra in someone else’s reality show. It is bored, it is predictable, and it is exactly what we deserve for letting a real estate developer treat a constitution like a lease agreement. The world isn't sending us their best; they're sending us their wealthiest, and we’re too intellectually bankrupt to realize the difference.