IN THIS GUIDE · What to confirm before an individual applicant moves any money toward a Gold Card gift
Start with the GOLD CARD eligibility and application overview
Confirm the structure, then the current numbers
As checked on the official FAQ on September 7, 2026, the individual route involves a nonrefundable processing fee of US$15,000 per person, followed after successful vetting by a gift of US$1 million to the U.S. government for the principal, with each accompanying spouse or unmarried child under 21 adding a further US$15,000 fee and US$1 million gift. The gift is exactly that: money given to the government, not capital placed in a business, not a deposit and not an amount that returns on any outcome. Because every figure is published on a page rather than in a statute, re-read the current page and FAQ immediately before each payment and keep a dated copy of what it said. Any advisor who quotes different figures should be asked to show the official source.
Understand which immigrant category actually carries the case
The official material describes successful Gold Card applicants being processed through the EB-1 or EB-2 employment-based immigrant categories. That matters for a veterinarian in two ways. First, the applicant still has to be admissible and eligible under whichever category is used, so the background check, medical examination and the ordinary grounds of inadmissibility apply. Second, visa availability in those categories is governed by the monthly visa bulletin, and a payment does not create a visa number that does not exist. The program is not EB-5: there is no job-creation requirement, no commercial enterprise and no conditional residence tied to an investment, and equally none of the EB-5 protections around capital being returned at the end of the process. Keep those two frameworks entirely separate in every discussion.
Sequence the payments around the decision points
The processing fee is paid at application and is not returned. The gift follows successful vetting, so nobody should be asked to transfer the larger sum before that stage, and any request to do so is a reason to stop and check. A veterinarian with a practice to sell or a partner to buy out should not liquidate anything on the strength of an application alone; the practical order is to confirm current terms, pay the processing fee, complete vetting, and only then arrange the gift and the practice transition. Her spouse and children each have their own fee and gift, so the household total should be calculated per person and confirmed against the current page. Nothing in the program gives a Canadian veterinarian a U.S. licence to practise; state veterinary boards license separately, and that timeline runs in parallel with everything above.
Sources reviewed 2026-09-07. This guide covers a preparation focus; it is not an individual eligibility assessment.