Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) introduced legislation Wednesday that would bar non-citizens from receiving Pell Grants, the federal need-based aid program that helps low-income undergraduates pay for college. The bill, dubbed the “Pell for Americans Act,” would amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to require that grant recipients be U.S. citizens, according to an exclusive report from Breitbart News.
Banks framed the proposal as a straightforward matter of taxpayer priority. “American taxpayers have no business subsidizing the college tuitions of foreign nationals, and three decades later, I’m proud to reintroduce this commonsense bill to put American students first,” the Indiana Republican said in a statement to Breitbart.
A narrow fix after broader eligibility fight
The bill arrives after earlier Republican efforts to tighten Pell eligibility in the party’s One Big Beautiful Bill failed to close every avenue for non-citizens. Several categories of non-citizens remain eligible under current law, including refugees, asylees, immigration parolees, Cuban-Haitian entrants, and conditional permanent residents.
Banks’ office told Breitbart that the legislation is modeled on a measure first introduced by House Democrats in 1994, which had the same stated goal of amending the Higher Education Act to direct Pell funds only to American students. The senator invoked that history to draw a contrast with the current Democratic position. “In 2026, Socialist-aligned Democrats fight harder for illegal aliens than their own constituents, but back in 1994, they led a bill that would ensure taxpayer-funded Pell Grants are reserved for American students only,” Banks said.
Program finances add pressure
The political fight over eligibility is unfolding against a difficult fiscal backdrop for the Pell program. In February, The Hill reported that Pell is in financial difficulty, with a projected shortfall of billions of dollars that could cause problems for students as soon as 2028.
The Congressional Budget Office projects the program will be $5 billion in debt by the end of this fiscal year. Over the next decade, that figure climbs to somewhere between $104 billion and $132 billion if no corrective action is taken, according to the CBO estimate cited in the Breitbart report.
Those projections persist even after lawmakers approved a one-time $10.5 billion boost for Pell in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year.
The bill’s path forward remains unclear. Pell Grants are a popular and long-standing fixture of federal higher education policy, and past attempts to narrow eligibility have run into opposition from immigration advocacy groups and higher education associations, who argue that restricting aid excludes students who are otherwise lawfully present in the country. Banks’ proposal would eliminate eligibility for those groups outright unless they obtain citizenship.
For now, the legislation represents an opening bid in what is likely to be a broader negotiation over how to stabilize the Pell program’s finances while reshaping who qualifies for the aid.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/education/2026/09/23/exclusive-sen-banks-unveils-bill-banning-non-citizens-pell-grants/