Texas Lawmakers Introduce Bill To Limit Athletic Scholarship Funds For International Students

Two recently introduced bills by Texas lawmakers are taking aim at the amount of college athletic scholarship funding that international students can receive.

Texas Sen. Brandon Creighton and Rep. Drew Darby have introduced companion legislation that would mandate that public colleges in Texas only offer 25% of “athletic scholarships, grants, or other financial assistance” to athletes who aren’t U.S. citizens each year.

The bill from Creighton can be viewed here, while the bill from Darby can be seen here.

The news was first reported by Front Office Sports.

Thousands of athletes from outside the U.S. come not only to gain an education, but also use the NCAA system to further develop in their sports in hopes of representing their home country at international competitions, most notably the Olympics.

Here is a breakdown of which countries international swimmers competing collegiately in the U.S. are coming from and how many international swimmers are in the U.S. in each gender and division.

International athletes often receive compensation from the governing bodies of their home countries, even when playing collegiately in the U.S.

Darby explained his rationale for introducing the bill in an email to Front Office Sports.

“Despite what you may be led to believe, college sports are not a business, and our universities will not be in the business of maximizing profit for shareholders, but providing educational and athletic opportunities for the American citizens whose tax dollars fund their operations,” Darby said in the email. “The legislation still allows for foreign recruits to play on scholarship, but ensures that the system is not being abused to recruit talent for the sole purpose of winning and deviating from the sacred mission of post-secondary education.”

Darby’s comments do seem contradictory to the concept that collegiate athletics is a business, especially with the University of Texas athletics department announcing it surpassed $1 billion in fundraising and some schools considering private equity investment in college athletics.

The bills are still in committee and won’t have a vote on them for passage in the foreseeable future. Once bills are introduced in Texas legislature, it starts a process where they are referred to a committee, debated and voted on in one chamber, sent to the other chamber where the process is repeated, sent to conference where the two chambers agree on changes before sending to the Governor, and then finally signed or vetoed by the Governor.

Ksenia Maiorova, an immigration attorney, told Front Office Sports that U.S. born athletes who have dual citizenship might “fall within the scope of this limitation,” with how the bill is written.

According to the NCAA, roughly 25,000 out of the current 510.000 scholarship athletes are from outside the U.S.

Immigration attorneys also told Front Office Sports that the visa application process for college athletes has slowed in the first weeks of President Donald Trump’s second administration.

U.S. universities advised international students to return early from winter break before President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 to avoid travel bans, according to CNN.