U.S. President Donald Trump holds an executive order signed in the Oval Office, at the White House in Washington, D.C., Feb. 25. Reuters-Yonhap

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration will abolish the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program and replace it with the "Gold Card" for those who will be able to pay $5 million to the U.S. government, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Tuesday.

Lutnick made the remarks, casting the EB-5 program as "full of nonsense" and a way to get a "low-priced" green card, officially known as a permanent resident card.

"The president said, rather than having this sort of ridiculous EB-5 program, we are going to end the EB-5 program," he said, standing next to the president during a press availability in the Oval Office of the White House.

"We are going to replace it with the Trump Gold Card, which is really a green card, so they'll be able to pay $5 million to the U.S. government," he added.

Trump said the Gold Card will bring in "very high-level" people who create jobs.

"You are getting big taxpayers, big job producers," he said, noting the U.S. will be able to sell "maybe a million of these cards."

"If you add up the numbers, they are pretty good. As an example, a million cards would be $5 trillion. If you sell 10 million of the cards, that's a total of $50 trillion," he said. "We have $35 trillion in debt. That would be nice. So, we will see."

But he stressed that applications for the Gold Card will be vetted "very carefully." (Yonhap)