International student-athletes could lose their visas because of the NCAA’s new endorsement deal policy

• The NCAA is allowing college athletes to profit off endorsements for the first time in its history.
• International student-athletes could lose their visas if they sign a deal.
• Agreeing to accept money for an endorsement could compromise their status as a student.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

College athletes are celebrating their new right to make money off of endorsement deals, but thousands of international athletes might be walking into a trap if they try to take advantage.

International student-athletes who are enrolled on student visas – the only legal way for a non-US citizen to attend American schools under current immigration laws – could even be at risk of deportation, according to immigration attorney Robert Seager, a partner at Archer & Greiner P.C.'s Sports Law Group.

"When legislation establishing payment for student-athletes is passed, it changes a foreign athlete's visa classification from student to paid employee," Seager told Insider. "This creates huge potential for conflict between students, schools, and the federal government."

Seager does support the rights of college athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness but expects certain government institutions to exploit potential changes to the immigration status of international students if they sign endorsement deals.

"For example, a person I spoke to plays soccer," Seager said. "That student's ability to maintain visa status can now otherwise be in violation because they're accepting compensation for outside-of-field activities."

Immigration issues would affect some sports more than others

Nearly 13% of Division I athletes and 7% of Division II athletes were from overseas in 2020, according to NCAA data.

Men's and women's tennis led all sports in rostered athletes with an overseas residency with 61% of all men's players and 60% of all women's players.

Ice Hockey was second, with 37% of all men's players coming from overseas and 44% of women's players.

Soccer was third with 35% of men but just 12% of women.

"If it becomes situations where, take soccer for example, where some of these guys come over and get paid to wear Adidas shoes, I do really think that the government will take real issue with that," Seager said. "They're going to consider that compensation, which is what we call the 'black letter law' of the regulations."

Basketball was fourth with 17% of men and 13% of women coming from overseas.

Baseball had just 2%, and softball had less than 1%.

Football, the college sport that generates the NCAA's most overall revenue, had no data for rostered overseas players. Men's basketballs 17% represents that only demographic of college athletes from the major revenue sports.

"One of the growing populous of foreign national students ... from a percentage basis, it's not as significant in the big ones: football, baseball, basketball," Seager said. "But it definitely will, on the front end, impact some of the sports that aren't the football and the basketball."

Athletes in lesser-revenue sports have already signed endorsement deals, as the new regulations allow for deals to be made without major investments on the part of the sponsor.

Several third-party startup agencies aimed at connecting college athletes with endorsements are focusing their efforts on recruiting the lesser-revenue athletes, including international ones on student visas.

It's up to individual universities to protect international students

Seager says the key to preventing international students from falling into the NIL trap is awareness. It falls under the responsibilities of individual universities and athletic programs to navigate their athletes through the law.

"The protections that these universities and these college programs and athletic departments can set them up with is awareness to say 'hey look, NIL is here, you're in a different class than home-grown US high school students, you need to be aware of the potential impact of accepting the endorsement deal,'" Seager said. "At the federal level, it's a violation."

There has also been federal legislation proposed to protect international student-athletes.

The College Athletes Right to Organize bill, which Senators Chris Murphy and Bernie Sanders submitted, would revise labor laws to formally make college athletes into employees of their schools and allow them to unionize and qualify for work visas.

The NCAA strongly opposes the bill and is just one of a handful of active federal legislative efforts to reform the college sports industry. There has been little progress in moving the bill through congress, and it is unlikely to pass in 2021.