It's not the law - it's the way somone who broke that law was treated like a suspected drug-dealer. Sure, technically they had the right to deport him. But doing so in this case was heavy handed, and adding strip-searches and refusing to let him contact his girlfriend was purely obnoxious.
Although not directly linked to terrorism, this kind of behaviour is condoned now because the fear of immigrants generated by "terroism".
People keep repeating that he broke a law and was planning to work for pay, the pay being a single meal offered by his host at one of the coffee houses he was going to play some songs at.
I have not seen any evidence though that someone giving you one dinner during a trip qualifies as pay in exchange for work.
It seems to me that it is a fairly common occurrence that one is treated to a meal by a friend or associate while traveling.
Does anyone have actual references to law that make clear that being treated to dinner qualifies as being paid for work and thus triggers a visa violation and reasonable cause for deportation?
> I have not seen any evidence that someone giving you one dinner during a trip qualifies as pay in exchange for work
You are approaching this from entirely the wrong direction. Your statement is like saying "I have not seen any evidence that so-and-so is innocent of the crime".
It is the presumption in the United States that someone applying for a "non immigrant" (visitor) visa intends to illegally immigrate to the United States. And so it is the burden of the visa applicant to prove otherwise.
There does not need to be any evidence that one dinner during a trip qualifies as pay for his entry in the United States to be lawfully denied.
