Texas Sen. Brandon Creighton and Rep. Drew Darby quietly introduced bills into the Texas Legislature to cap athletic scholarships for international students-athletes who attend Texas public colleges.
The news was first reported Friday afternoon by “Front Office Sports.”
Creighton introduced a bill on Feb. 14 and Darby introduced a companion bill Friday. Each bill mandates, in part, that public colleges in the state award ” students who are citizens of a foreign country” no more than 25% of “total athletic scholarships, grants, or similar financial assistance.”
Questions emailed to University of Texas athletics seeking comment on the bill were not immediately answered late Friday afternoon.
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Immigration attorney Ksenia Maiorova told Front Office Sports that U.S.-born athletes who have dual citizenship might “fall within the scope of this limitation” based on the way the bill is written.
“The plain language makes this much broader than international athletes,” she told the outlet.
The bills, which have yet to make it out of committee, still have a long way from becoming law.
International student-athletes can attend U.S. colleges and universities to earn their degree and continue their sport careers. Some earn the chance to go home and compete for their respective national teams. Nearly 25,000 current NCAA athletes out of 510,000 come from outside the U.S., according to the association’s website.
International student-athletes, for the most part, do not have the opportunity to participate in NIL brand deals and at least one lawsuit is looking to change that.
In the first weeks of the President Donald Trump’s second administration, the visa application process for college athletes has slowed, immigration attorneys told FOS. The news comes amid a larger effort by federal lawmakers and the Trump administration to limit the flow of undocumented immigrants into the country and increase immigration enforcement.
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