Sponsors
The bill centralizes and standardizes reporting of international student and faculty enrollment to improve immigration compliance and detect visa fraud, while imposing new administrative burdens, legal friction, and increased privacy and deterrence risks for international students and institutions.
Immigrant students, faculty, and administrators: federal agencies will gain centralized, timely visibility into visa statuses and enrollment, enabling faster identification of nonimmigrant populations for immigration compliance and visa adjudication.
Immigrant students, faculty, and administrators: federal education and immigration officials will have access to current enrollment data, helping detect and deter visa fraud and strengthen the integrity of student visa programs.
Universities that receive federal funds: will have a clear, standardized reporting timeline (initial 60 days, then within 30 days of registration) for submitting SEVIS data, reducing ambiguity about compliance expectations.
Non‑U.S. citizen students, faculty, and administrators: face expanded government data sharing about their immigration status, increasing privacy, surveillance, and civil‑liberties risks.
International students and staff: may be deterred from attending or working at U.S. institutions because of increased mandatory reporting and cross‑agency access to their data, risking reduced enrollment, lost tuition revenue, and diminished research talent.
Colleges and universities that receive federal funds: must incur new administrative and IT costs to collect, disaggregate, and transmit detailed SEVIS reports on tight timelines, creating budgetary and staffing pressures.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires federally funded colleges to submit electronic lists of non‑U.S. citizen students, faculty, and administrators by visa type to SEVIS within 60 days and then within 30 days after each term registration.
Introduced March 24, 2026 by Thomas Bryant Cotton · Last progress March 24, 2026
Requires colleges and universities that receive federal funds or benefits to electronically submit to SEVIS a full, current list of all non‑U.S. citizen and non‑lawful permanent resident students, faculty, and administrators, broken down by visa type. The first submission must be made within 60 days after the law is enacted, and subsequent submissions must be made within 30 days after each term's registration deadline. Officials from the Departments of Education, Homeland Security, Justice, and State are given access to the submitted data to carry out their duties. The change is an amendment to existing federal student‑information law to expand SEVIS reporting and data access; it does not appropriate funds or create other program changes in the text provided.