28-02-2025
Lori Falce: America was built with a dollar and a dream, not $5 million gold cards
Feb. 28—My mother's grandmother Karolina was born in Austria in 1899. She came to Philadelphia in 1906 with her mother, an unmarried woman who had a romantic story about Karolina's unnamed father but who rewrote her life in America claiming to be a widow.
Karolina was not wealthy. Neither was her mother.
My father's great-grandfather was born in the canton of Glarus in Switzerland in 1826. Marcus Luchsinger, family legend tells us, was headed west when he arrived in New Orleans in 1845. Instead, he traveled up the Mississippi and settled in Minnesota.
Grandpa Luchsinger was a bit better off than Karolina when he arrived. He was 19 instead of 7, but he was not rich.
Of my husband's eight great-grandparents, all but one was born in Italy. They arrived in Pittsburgh through Canada or New York at different points somewhere around the 1890s. They brought their dreams, their hopes and their willingness to work.
None of them brought $150,000.
That's about what
$5 million today would have equaled back then.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said he wants to create a "gold card" that would cost
$5 million. There is already a visa for investors. It is the EB-5. It is given to people who plan to do business in America, spending about
$1 million and creating jobs.
It makes sense to increase the amount of money for that investment. The program has been in place since 1990 and could probably benefit by updating. This program could be mutually beneficial, and there is no reason to think otherwise. Many countries offer a kind of express lane for immigrants with enough money to smooth the way.
But what stings is looking at the family tree and knowing no one would have qualified.
America has built its reputation as the refuge of the poor and tired and the wretched. My family fit in those categories. An unwed mother building a new life. A German-speaking boy barely older than my son. A whole table full of Italians who brought their language and culture to the neighborhoods and mills of Pittsburgh.
The collective memory of America is filled with stories of the ancestor who got off the boat with a dollar to his name. We accept those as the remarkable accounts of accomplishment they are.
The $5 million card has its place. However, it can't become the gold standard for immigration. We must spend as much time finding legal, viable, accomplishable routes to immigration and citizenship for the people with few dollars and big dreams.
If we don't, we miss out on the way Karolina brought up her family and taught her granddaughters to make schnitzel. We don't have Grandpa Luchsinger raising a granddaughter who would found a town with her husband and their family name. I wouldn't have my son making his father's marinara sauce with all the right herbs and meats, just like his great-grandmother passed down.
Because without all those immigrants who came here to find gold rather than pay it, America would be a lot less rich.
Lori Falce is the Tribune-Review community engagement editor and an opinion columnist. For more than 30 years, she has covered Pennsylvania politics, Penn State, crime and communities. She joined the Trib in 2018. She can be reached at lfalce@
