On February 3, 2026, a group including the American Association of University Professors and others filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s “Gold Card” visa program. The complaint asks a U.S. district court for declaratory and injunctive relief against the Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Commerce; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; and the heads of those agencies.
The complaint challenges the creation and implementation of the “Gold Card” program “in contravention of Congress’s exclusive authority to regulate immigration and to raise revenue. By giving priority consideration to and awarding visas to individuals who can pay $1 million, rather than to highly talented individuals whose admission would benefit the United States, the program runs counter to the laws enacted by Congress.”
Plaintiffs note that the payment-linked program also “alters how immigrant classifications, including the EB-1A ‘extraordinary ability’ and EB-2 ‘exceptional ability’ preference categories, are defined and how applications are processed” and “causes the displacement of statutorily qualified applicants given the limited number of available visas and the preferential treatment of Gold Card applications.” By treating a payment to the Commerce Department as evidence of statutory eligibility for EB-1 and EB-2 visas, and expediting consideration of applications from individuals who make the payment, the defendants “both exceed their statutory authority and act contrary to long standing laws and policies designed to attract highly talented individuals to the United States,” the complaint states. By conditioning access to the visas on payment, the Gold Card program “allows visas to be bought, and thereby takes visas away from the people to whom federal statute specifies they should be awarded—scientists and engineers, physicians, researchers, and other accomplished individuals whose admission would substantially benefit the United States.”
