What is Project 2025
Indian immigrants wondering what a future Trump administration holds for them will find answers in Project 2025, the GOP manifesto for the country if the former president wins the November general election.
Project 2025, also known as the “2025 Mandate for Leadership” was published in late 2023 by The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, and is the policy playbook for a second Trump administration. Immigration advocates say it will inflict a devastating blow to the nation’s immigration system.
At a June 14 Ethnic Media Services briefing, panelists shared insights on Project 2025. Cecilia Esterline of the Niskanen Center said “Its impacts on immigration would be far more complex and destructive than previously reported. It reflects a meticulously orchestrated, comprehensive plan to drive immigration levels to unprecedented lows and increase the federal government’s power to the states’ detriment. These proposals circumvent Congress and the courts and are specifically engineered to dismantle the foundations of our immigration system.”
Esterline stressed that Project 2025 should be taken seriously. During President Trump’s first tenure, 64% of the Heritage Foundation’s previous manifesto was adopted within the first year. This time, key authors of the latest playbook are set to take on Cabinet-level positions if Republicans claim victory in the next election cycle.
The dense 920-page pedagogical manifest often devolves into rants against communist China, liberal elite professionals, immigrants, and Big Tech. The lengthy paragraphs on how to counter “The Great Awakening” also contain the conservatives’ plan for immigrants and non-American citizens.
Their anti-immigration proposal pitches: 1) militarized mass deportations of people without active legal status, 2) introduction of bureaucratic delays and hurdles to the immigration process, and 3) point-blank refusal of entry and suspension of all immigrant and non-immigrant visas of persons from recalcitrant countries, i.e. the countries that do not accept the timely return of their deported nationals.
Since mid-2020, India occupies a prime spot on this list.
How Project 2025 will affect Indian Immigrants
Reduction of Student Visa Programs and Eligibility for In-State Tuition
Project 2025 advocates increased scrutiny of F and J visa recipients as an additional security measure. The proposal states that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should play a larger role in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) and that visas issued to foreign students from “enemy nations” must be either eliminated or significantly reduced. However, there is no clarification on which countries constitute those nations, or what security risks students pose.
Immigrant students will face financial hurdles, as the mandate urges in-state tuition be reserved only for citizens and Green Card holders. DACA recipients and “documented dreamers” or the children of employment-based visa holders will be disqualified. Cecilia Esterline warns that even Birthright Citizenship may be subjected to new and unseen challenges under the mandate.
More H1-B Reforms
The proposed visa strategy suggests that H1-B visas should be issued only to the “best and brightest” and directs the USCIS to limit the classes of “aliens” eligible for work authorization. It also prescribes new wage guidelines for the Department of Labor (DOL).
Currently, there are four wage levels determined by skill, knowledge, and experience. The proposed guidelines will get rid of lower Level I and Level II wage levels, thereby eliminating the bulk of jobs available to recent graduates, including those with advanced degrees. According to the Niskanen Center, this will massively hurt graduate students seeking employment in the U.S. In 2022, nearly 44 percent of all H-1B petitions for initial employment were issued to individuals transitioning from student status, accounting for 77 percent of H-1B petitions requesting a change of status from within the U.S.
The DOL’s inability to certify the wages of entry-to-mid-level positions will effectively shut the door to the H1-B program for many recent graduates.
Green Card Backlogs
Project 2025 seeks to resolve snaking legal immigration backlogs by eliminating them. Any visa category with a backlog will not be able to accept any more applicants until the entire backlog has been reduced to a “manageable” number. New applications will be automatically suspended. People applying for a status change inside the U.S. will be rejected and asked to leave the U.S. immediately until all visa backlogs have been addressed.
It is unclear if any backlog will trigger the mandate or if a numerical limit will be set. For now, the proposal aims to manufacture further delays and may even be used to pause processing indefinitely. What is certain is that this proposal will adversely affect the millions of Indians currently on H1-Bs, O-1s, and those already waiting in the Green Card queue.
Impact on other visas
Major reductions are proposed for the seasonal H2-A/B visas given to temporary farm and construction workers with the mandate arguing for the end of the visa program within the next 10 to 20 years. It instructs the DHS to only admit citizens from a 2023 list of approved countries – a list that does not include India.
Project 2025 also intends to eliminate T and U visas, which are temporary visas awarded to victims of human trafficking and mental or physical abuse.
More Delays
Project 2025 proposes several manufactured bureaucratic delays including a directive requiring Biometric assessments of visa applicants at every visa certification, repealing a Covid-era regulation that permitted existing visa holders to skip the interview process for the direct drop-box. The mandate requires every approved visa application to undergo a secondary review process conducted by the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) before approval notices can be issued to the petitioner.
Currently, the FDNS can handle around 35,000 cases per year. USCIS, on the other hand, handles around 8.6 million applications per year. Introducing an FDNS review could trigger significant delays and prevent USCIS-approved applicants from receiving legal status or work authorization.
The Majority Support High-Skilled Immigration
On a positive note, most Americans are not on board with these extreme immigration reforms. Polls by two leading policy think tanks, the Economic Innovation Group (EIG) and Americans for Prosperity, show that people on both sides of the political spectrum are more concerned about the availability of jobs, health care services, layoffs, education, and inflation.
David Buer of the Cato Institute stated that the extreme measures proposed in this document may merely be election bait and even if Republicans win the election, they will face plenty of legal and logistical hurdles before proposals become law.
According to the EIG, “Three-quarters of American voters support increasing high-skilled immigration (HSI), with widespread approval across the entire political spectrum and in every presidential swing state. Voters’ desire to welcome more foreign-born, highly skilled talent into the American workforce is unaffected by their pressing concerns about border security and the health of the legal immigration system, or by their pessimistic views about the U.S. economy.”