 |
|
|
|||||
President Donald Trump said he is planning to sell a $5 million gold card to wealthy foreigner investors, giving them the ability to work and live in the U.S. with a path toward becoming a citizen, as part of a program that would replace the current EB-5 investor visas. EB-5s are essentially a green card for permanent legal residency, created some 35 years ago to drum up foreign investment. The visa requires foreigners to spend $1 million (give or take) on a company that employs at least 10 people, according to the Associated Press. Of the potential buyers of the proposed gold card, Trump said Tuesday: Theyll be wealthy and theyll be successful, and theyll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people, and we think its going to be extremely successful.” Here’s what to know about Trump’s gold card. How does the gold card differ from a green card or EB-5 visa? Newly appointed commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said the Trump gold card would increase the financial bar for investors from $1 million to $5 million, and do away with what he calls the nonsense or fraud that he said now characterizes the EB-5 program. He said the change will happen in two weeks. The biggest difference between the gold card and a green card is the gold card provides a much faster route to unlimited residency and the ability to work in the U.S. for these wealthy foreign investors.How many gold cards would be available versus EB-5 visas? How many gold cards would be available versus EB-5 visas? A total of 18,786 EB-5 visas are available for the 2025 financial year. Meanwhile, Trump has suggested millions of gold cards could be sold, which would raise revenue which he desperately needs to fund his enormous tax cuts and domestic agenda. In the past, Trump and his family business have made use of the EB-5 program for their own benefit. When asked if Russian oligarchs could make use of the gold card program, Trump responded, Yeah, possibly. I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.” Can Trump replace the EB-5 visa? The EB-5 visa program was created by Congress in 1990 to create jobs and increase foreign investment in the economy, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Congress has reauthorized the program through September 30, 2027 through the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act. While Trump said his “gold card” would not need Congressional approval, “the president does not have authority to strike down an act of Congress, including the existing EB-5 program,” according to legal experts at the law firm Greenberg Traurigs Immigration & Compliance Practice.
Category:
E-Commerce
Millions of social security recipients are about to receive retroactive payments, as well as get a permanent hike in their monthly check.The increase in social security payments is due to the Social Security Fairness Act, signed into law by President Biden. According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), about 3.2 million recipients who previously only received partial payments will be impacted. The SSA made the announcement in a press release on Tuesday. The Social Security Fairness Act, which Biden signed in December shortly before leaving office, eliminated two major policies which reduced social security payments for millions: the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO). Both policies barred employees with a public pension from collecting their full benefits under the federal retirement program and reduced survivor benefits for family members. The former administration previously said that it could take up to a year for the payments to go out. However, Tuesday’s announcement explained that the retroactive payments, which should include any funds due after January 2024, will now be expedited.Social Securitys aggressive schedule to start issuing retroactive payments in February and increase monthly benefit payments beginning in April supports President Trumps priority to implement the Social Security Fairness Act as quickly as possible, said Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of Social Security, in the press release. The agencys original estimate of taking a year or more now will only apply to complex cases that cannot be processed by automation. The American people deserve to get their due benefits as quickly as possible. The press release explained that recipients impacted will include “some teachers, firefighters, and police officers in many states; federal employees covered by the Civil Service Retirement System; and people whose work had been covered by a foreign social security system.”“Most people will receive their one-time retroactive payment by the end of March, which will be deposited into their bank account on record with Social Security,” the release explained, noting that monthly increases, which will vary from person to person, should begin in April.A recent study on how COVID impacted social security pointed to a $205 billion increase in the nation’s social security fund. An extra 1.7 million deaths related to the pandemic meant that costs to the program were greatly reduced when people who had paid into the program prematurely passed, and therefore stopped collecting benefits. The Trump Administration did not point to the surplus as an explanation for expediting payments.
Category:
E-Commerce
Meta Quest 3 users will now be able to explore detailed 3D scans of sculptures, rock formations, plant life, and other interesting objects from around the world.The 3D images, which users can virtually zoom in on or walk around, are part of a new app from Pokémon Go-maker Niantic called Into the Scaniverse. Last year, the company released the latest version of a smartphone Scaniverse app letting users create detailed images of public scenes or objects within their phones, with the ability to add public images to a shared map.Already, the map includes more than 50,000 3D scenes, including renderings of Stonehenge, ancient ruins in Europe, Japanese temples, and even a shrine to Elvis Presley, all captured with the Scaniverse app or through Niantic games like Ingress and Pokémon Go. With the new Quest app, users will be able to traverse a map of the world from a virtual hot air balloon, spotting and clicking pins on the map to explore in stereo 3D vision the sights that were scanned there.Our goal is really to get a large collection of high-quality scans that folks can visit around the world, says Brian McClendon, senior vice president of engineering at Niantic. You can walk up to it and look up at it, and you get a sense of scale of these objects that sometimes photos dont do justice.[Image: Ninantic]Making the scans, created using a mathematical modeling technique called the Gaussian splat, available through virtual reality will hopefully also incentivize more users to go out and scan and share the world around them, similar to how the rise of Instagram motivated people to take and share photos, he says. The scanning process generally takes only a few minutes, and users can view their own scans on their phones or Quest headsets before deciding whether to share them to the public map.This allows you to experiment with locations and try things out, and once you have what you like, you can then choose to publish to the map or not, says McClendon. The scan library is currently growing rapidly, with more than 11,000 published since December. Users on Niantic forums and in meetups also share tips on how to capture the best scans. McClendon, who is based in Arizona, has uploaded some scans of cactus and other desert foliage that not everyone sees in person, and hes hopeful that users continue to increase their coverage of the planet. [Animation: Ninantic]Though the scans might be most impressive in virtual reality, its not necessary to have a Quest to experience them, with the 3D images also accessible in the Scaniverse iPhone and Android apps or through the web. Scans taken with Niantics software and shared publicly are also available for developers to use in Niantic Studio, the companys tool for building XR and 3D games and experiences. Users also share some of their favorite scans through social media like X, Theads, and Bluesky. But McClendon anticipates that the Quest apps map view will lead to a new wave of discovery as people explore spots near them or places theyve visited in the past.[Image: Ninantic]The app can even be used to help plan vacations, with people exploring potential sites before they travel, McClendon suggests. And ideally, when they arrive, theyll be inspired to contribute more scans to the public collection.The real goal is to motivate more people to create more scans, McClendon says.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||