The Asylum Docket

The problem

Asylum is a promise the United States made in 1980: a person who reaches the country and can show a well-founded fear of persecution at home will not be sent back to it. The promise is right and this catalog keeps it. What the country built to keep it is a queue. At the end of fiscal 2025 the immigration courts had 2,424,061 asylum cases pending, and the asylum office that handles claims filed away from the border had 1.6 million more by March 2026, up 22 percent in a year. A claim filed with the asylum office waits more than six years for a decision; one in the courts, about four years on average and more in the busiest ones.

The numbers at each stage explain what the queue does. A person who arrives at the border and claims fear is screened; 83 percent pass the screening, whose standard was designed to be low so that no genuine refugee is turned away at the door. Of the cases finally decided, about 29 percent at the asylum office and 31 percent in the courts are granted. Between the door and the decision, most claimants receive a work permit after 180 days and live and work in the country for the years the case takes. For the seven in ten whose claim will fail, the wait is the entire benefit of the claim, and the system, by taking years to say no, has made claiming worthwhile regardless of the merits. For the three in ten with a genuine claim, the wait is years of limbo, separation from family, and the risk of a policy change before the decision. Nobody designed this. It is what a promise without a clock becomes.

Other countries keep the promise faster. The Netherlands decides most claims within six months of filing; Germany's average is under a year; Canada's target is sixty days for a hearing. They do it with more adjudicators per claim and a decision at first instance by trained officers rather than by a judge in an adversarial trial.

№ 007 argued for a perimeter that is fully seen, fast, firm and humane. № 099 built the court. This proposal is the clock on the docket.

The proposal

The Asylum Docket: a decision on every asylum claim within 180 days of filing, by statute. First-instance decisions by trained asylum officers, at the border and in the interior, with one appeal to the Immigration Court of № 099. The clock runs against the government: a claim not decided in 180 days earns the claimant a work permit and priority scheduling, not a dismissal. A claimant who misses a hearing without cause has the case closed. The asylum office triples its officers to meet the clock.

How it would work

1. One hundred and eighty days. From the filing of a claim, or from the border screening, to a first decision: 180 days. The number is longer than the Dutch standard and shorter than any American wait in twenty years, and it is written in statute rather than in a Department's target.

1. Officers first, judges on appeal. Every claim is decided first by an asylum officer, a trained civil servant conducting an interview, as affirmative claims already are, rather than by an immigration judge in an adversarial hearing. A claimant who loses may appeal once to the Immigration Court, which hears the appeal within 90 days. A claimant who wins is granted, and the government may appeal on a question of law. The courts' asylum docket, which is most of their backlog, shrinks to appeals.

1. The clock runs against the state. If the government has not decided a claim in 180 days, the claimant receives a work permit immediately, if they do not already have one, and the case moves to the front of the queue. The government cannot benefit from its own delay, and the incentive to staff the office lands on the office. A claimant who misses an interview or hearing without good cause has the claim closed and is subject to removal; the clock binds both sides.

1. The border. Claims made at the border are screened as now and, where the screening is passed, decided by an officer at or near the border within 60 days, while the claimant is in the supervised release of № 060. A decision within two months of arrival is the single largest change the docket makes: it replaces the years of presence that follow a passed screening with an answer.

1. The officers. The asylum office, with about 1,000 officers today, grows to 3,000 over three years. At about 300 decisions an officer a year, that is 900,000 decisions annually, enough to clear the affirmative backlog and meet the clock on new claims. The cost is about $300 million a year.

1. Counsel. A claimant has the right to counsel at their own expense, as now, and the 180 days are long enough to find it. The Sponsor Corps of № 052 may extend to sponsoring a claimant's representation, and the proposal invites it.

1. What does not change. The standard for asylum, the categories of persecution, the bar on returning anyone to torture, and the refugee ceiling set elsewhere are untouched. The docket decides claims under the law as it is; it decides them in months.

The numbers

The backlog. 2.4 million in the courts, 1.6 million at the office: about 4 million pending claims, most of which will be denied when decided, and all of which are undecided.

The clock's effect. At 900,000 officer decisions a year and the courts reduced to appeals, the backlog clears in about five years and new claims are decided in six months. The average time a failed claimant spends in the country falls from several years to under one.

The grants. At a 30 percent grant rate, 4 million pending claims contain about 1.2 million people with valid claims who have been waiting years for an answer. The docket is their proposal as much as anyone's.

The cost. About $300 million a year for the officers, against detention costs of $3.9 billion a year and a court system that spends most of its capacity on cases the officers would decide.

The honest objections

"Speed is the enemy of a fair decision, and people with real claims will be denied in a hurry." The strongest objection and the reason the docket is 180 days rather than 60, provides one appeal to an independent court, and gives the claimant a work permit if the government is late. Six months is longer than the Dutch first instance and longer than most claimants today spend with a lawyer before their case is heard, because most spend years without one. The current system does not protect the genuine claimant with its slowness; it abandons them to a queue.

"Deciding at the border by officers rather than judges is a denial of due process." It is the process every affirmative claimant already receives, with an appeal to a court that № 099 makes independent for the first time. A trial before a judge who works for the prosecutor, four years from now, is not more due process than an interview with a trained officer in sixty days and an appeal to a judge who does not.

"A surge at the border will overwhelm the clock." It will strain it, and the clock's design is that the strain lands on the government: a claim not decided in time earns the claimant a permit, which is the reason the office will be staffed for the surge rather than allowed to fall behind. The current system's response to a surge is to let the queue grow, which is the policy that produced four million pending cases.

"Faster denials mean faster removals, and this is a removal machine dressed as fairness." A faster system denies the seven in ten faster and removes them, and grants the three in ten faster and lets them stay. That is what asylum is supposed to do. A reader who thinks more than three in ten should be granted should argue for a broader standard, which item 7 leaves to Congress. A system that grants by delay rather than by decision is not generosity; it is abdication.

"The refugee ceiling should be higher, and this does nothing about it." Correct, and № 052 is where that argument lives. The docket decides who has a claim under the law. How many the country chooses to welcome beyond that is a different question, and it should be answered by a vote, not by a backlog.

Sources

• Executive Office for Immigration Review, Adjudication Statistics, pending asylum cases at the end of fiscal 2025; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, affirmative asylum backlog, March 2026
• Congressional Research Service, Asylum Process in Immigration Courts and Selected Trends (R47504), on grant rates, credible fear screening and wait times
• Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst (Netherlands), asylum decision timelines; Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (Germany), average processing times; Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, hearing targets
• Refugee Act of 1980, Pub. L. 96-212; 8 U.S.C. § 1158
• Proposals № 007 (The Humane Perimeter); № 022 (The Turnstile); № 052 (The Sponsor Corps); № 060 (The Detention Clock); № 099 (The Immigration Court)