Project 2025 is the Heritage Foundation’s playbook for the next conservative administration and the newest installment in a series of so-called “Mandates for Leadership” that the Foundation has published regularly over the past four decades. Project 2025 was co-authored by many of former President Trump’s most loyal allies and first-term officials. During his first administration, nearly two-thirds of the previous issue’s recommendations were implemented within a year of taking office. Project 2025 is therefore a critical insight into the policies that may be enacted if Trump secures a second term.
Though the playbook’s recommendations span all policy areas and federal agencies, the plan is particularly notable for its extreme changes to the U.S. immigration system–many of which are detailed in this Niskanen Center report. While the provisions outlined would have devastating consequences for the U.S. economy and immigration system, the cutoff of backlogged visa categories for legal immigrants would be particularly catastrophic.
Project 2025 directs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to stop accepting new applications and petitions in categories whose backlogs are deemed “excessive.” However, “excessive” is neither defined nor clarified, and the playbook’s other recommendations and the accompanying bureaucratic hurdles would almost certainly exacerbate existing backlogs.
Even without accounting for new delays created by the other proposals, a reasonably conservative estimate identifies fifteen categories of immigration likely to be cut off from receiving new applications and petitions under the “excessive” backlogs policy.1 This model compares pending caseloads to estimated USCIS capacity, defined by average rates of case completion. It assumes that the “excessive” backlogs policy would cut off intake for categories whose pending caseloads exceed annual capacity by more than double, meaning two years’ worth of cases.2 Under that assumption, applications for affirmative asylum, Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and T and U nonimmigrant statuses, the statuses issued to qualifying victims of human trafficking and other crimes who cooperate with law enforcement, would be cut off, in addition to the eleven others identified below.3
While Project 2025 attempts to brand this policy as a workload management tool, it would have devastating, unintended consequences on American businesses, the economy, our national security, and immigrants.
For example, suppose a foreign national is in the United States and wants asylum, protection from persecution based on race, religion, nationality, social group membership, or political opinion. There are typically two possible pathways: apply affirmatively through USCIS or defensively through the immigration courts. Affirmative applicants proactively present their asylum claims to USCIS by filing form I-589. Though individuals may apply for asylum regardless of immigration status, affirmative applicants often hold underlying legal status as students, temporary employees, or even tourists. If USCIS stops accepting Forms I-589, the only other way for someone legally present in the U.S. to obtain asylum is to overstay or violate the terms of their visa, lose legal status, and wait to be placed in removal or deportation proceedings. This would result in even longer delays before they are able present their defensive asylum claim in court.
Cutting off TPS applications would have similar consequences. TPS has been utilized for decades to provide work authorization and legal protections to nationals of countries whose extraordinary conditions, such as armed conflicts or environmental disasters, temporarily prevent the country from safely accepting returned migrants.
Currently, more than 850,000 individuals in the United States are protected by TPS, and an estimated 180,000 of those have been in the U.S. since at least 2001. The Department of Homeland Security determines which countries’ nationals do and do not qualify for TPS to ensure that the program is representative of current country conditions. Therefore, each time a country is redesignated for TPS, beneficiaries of those countries must re-register with USCIS to maintain their work authorization and legal protections. This requirement would become impossible to fulfill if USCIS stops accepting TPS applications.
Other components of Project 2025 have already directed the next Republican administration to repeal all active TPS designations. Halting the intake of application would likely have a similar outcome, adding 850,000 individuals to our unauthorized immigrant population. Many of these individuals have deep roots in the U.S., including U.S. citizen children, homes, businesses, and other strong social and economic ties to the country. Beyond facing substantial detention and deportation costs, the U.S. could also lose an estimated $31 billion in unrealized annual economic activity if these individuals were to be removed.
These two examples highlight how a reputed workload management technique could swiftly increase the size of the U.S. undocumented population and impose significant new burdens on the U.S. economy. Moreover, this model and those outlined below do not fully account for all the backlogs that Project 2025’s proposed bureaucratic hurdles would create. As new backlogs lead to new cut-offs, similar outcomes are to be expected, and American businesses and taxpayers will bear the financial burden.
Endnotes:
1. The impacted categories are likely to be cut off under an “excessive” backlogs policy because pending caseloads far exceed annual capacity. For example, at the end of the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2024, there were over 1.1 million forms I-589, Applications for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal, pending at USCIS. However, in Fiscal Years 2014 to 2023, only an average of 26,126 forms I-589 were completed, i.e. approved or denied, per year.
If the “excessive” criteria is estimated to be 200% of average case completions for the past ten years, the following categories would be cut off from receiving new applications and petitions:
2. Alternative models:
3. See endnote 1.