Best USA Golden Visa Lawyers & Advisers (2026)

What the Gold Card Costs

Executive Order 14351 was signed on 19 September 2025 and the programme opened to applications in December 2025. The gift itself is made to the Department of Commerce; the Department of Homeland Security takes a $15,000 processing fee and runs the vetting. The petition is filed with USCIS on Form I-140G.

Read the price carefully, because this is where most summaries mislead. Both figures are per person. An individual applicant gives $1,000,000 and pays $15,000 — and each family member requires their own $1,000,000 gift and their own $15,000 fee. Family here means a spouse and unmarried children under 21, who should be included in the initial application. The Form I-140G filing fee is that same $15,000 processing fee, one fee rather than two. USCIS states the amount plainly: $15,000 per person, principal, spouse and children alike. A family of four is therefore around $4,000,000 plus $60,000, not $1,015,000. Department of State visa fees and a required medical examination sit on top of both figures, again per applicant. The corporate route is $2,000,000 per employee, with a 1% annual maintenance fee and a 5% transfer fee on top — the transfer fee is what a sponsor pays to move the gift to a different employee rather than making a new one.

The order of payment matters too. The $15,000 fee is non-refundable and paid up front with the application; the $1,000,000 gift is only requested once vetting is complete. An applicant who is refused loses the fee, per person, and gets nothing for it.

What a Successful Applicant Receives

A successful applicant receives lawful permanent residence through the EB-1 or EB-2 preference categories — unconditional, with no two-year conditional period to remove later.

It is not automatic. The executive order treats the gift as evidence of eligibility rather than granting status, and residence follows subject to visa availability, which can delay it, particularly for applicants chargeable to oversubscribed countries. Volume has also been very low: reporting puts applications at 338 with 165 processing fees paid by May 2026, and the Commerce Secretary testified in April 2026 that one applicant had been approved. Those figures come from a DHS court filing and congressional testimony reported in the press, not from any published DHS statistic, which is itself worth asking counsel about before you pay a non-refundable fee. What never comes back is the gift: it is a gift, not an investment, and no part of it is structured to return.

Permanent residence also makes you a U.S. tax resident, taxed on worldwide income including earnings that never touch the United States. For anyone comparing this with a European golden visa that carries no such consequence, that is usually the larger number.

Gold Card or EB-5

These are not two versions of the same thing. EB-5 asks for $800,000 in a targeted employment area or infrastructure project, or $1,050,000 in a standard project, and that capital stays at risk in a commercial enterprise which must create at least 10 full-time jobs for qualifying workers. It grants a conditional green card. Those thresholds are due their first inflation adjustment on 1 January 2027.

So the trade is straightforward once you see it. EB-5 costs less and may return capital, but it carries project risk, a job-creation test and a conditional period. The Gold Card costs more and returns nothing, and in exchange asks nothing of you operationally. Anyone presenting the Gold Card as an upgraded EB-5, or quoting one figure for both, has not understood the file.

The Question to Ask First

The Gold Card was created by executive order, not by an act of Congress. A future administration can end it, and its legal basis is open to challenge in court. EB-5 sits in statute and does not carry that risk.

That is the first thing competent counsel raises, unprompted, before any discussion of fees. Ask specifically what happens to a filed petition, and to the contribution, if the order is rescinded or struck down — and be wary of any firm that treats the question as an obstacle rather than the point.

Choosing U.S. Counsel

This is U.S. immigration law, so ask where the firm is actually admitted. Most of the firms listed here are global investment-migration advisories rather than U.S. law firms, and they may be working alongside U.S.-admitted counsel rather than providing the representation themselves. That can be perfectly fine — but you should know which arrangement you are buying.

Where a firm publishes a band, most sit between $2,000 and $10,000 for legal or advisory work, and not every listing publishes a fee. Those are directory buckets rather than quotes, and they are separate from the contribution and the government fee. Always get an itemised quote in writing.