> where you explicitly tell the visa officers you're on US soil ONLY for study purposes

What in the world does “ONLY for study purposes” mean? 24 hours a day, every day of the week?

> participate in a protest against the very country that granted you the study visa and then get mad that you are under investigation and would have been kicked out for violating the said visa? That's so bizarre.

First, he briefly attended the protest. Not the same as participating. I doubt the data from Google indicated he was holding a sign, shouting slogans, or speaking on stage. And it doesn’t sound like there was any marching or sit-in involved. (And if so, for 5 minutes?)

Second, why are you willfully equating a pro-Palestinian protest with being an anti-US protesT? Was the purpose of the protest to raise charitable funds, encourage more open discussion about the war on campus, provide moral support to Palestinian classmates, and/or any of a myriad of other purposes?

Finally, even if the purpose of the protest was politically motivated —- to push US policy on Israel and Palestine to change, how is that bizarre? In your mind is any protest that seeks to change a government’s policy at that moment an assault on that government, or on that nation? Someone who protests the death penalty, protests for stronger/weaker abortion laws, stronger/weaker gun laws, etc?

This is the USA we’re talking about. Despite all our faults (and they are legion), it is the bedrock of our founding and our core principles that democracy is a participatory process. Not just on Election Day. Throughout history we have advanced as a people and a nation because individuals have stepped up and spoken up. That has always been what has pushed us forward.

Bizarre indeed.

Author of the article is a journalist, attending a protest could very legitimately be for study purposes in his case.

Political events are usually part of student university life in western-tradition universities. From my personal experience, it was hard to completely avoid them if you had any involvement in the student extracurricular life.

I disagree. I cultivated a preference for the basement terminal labs while I was attending UCSD. While I was definitely in touch with the communist/socialist underbelly of dissenters there, I never found myself wrapped up in rallies or protests or any sort of political activism.

In fact, my mother had strongly discouraged me from attending UC Berkeley, because of the politicized environment there, the protests, the drug use. I had no interest in that stuff to begin with!

I read the on-campus commie newsletter that was distributed free. I ate at the vegan cafe out in the woods. It was literally called "The Ché Café". But I literally attended no protests or rallies. If they went on, I was steering clear or unaware of them. I went to rock concerts and other stuff at the student center, so I wasn't ignorant of events there.

Furthermore, in community college, I found engagement with a diversity of student groups, and most of them weren't political. There was an Asian-Pacific Islanders group (I am not) which had social events and films and no political advocacy (because they were probably oriented towards cultural exchange as well as assimilation.) There was an entrepreneur's group, an amateur radio group, and a cybersecurity group. Yes, there was a lot of activism on campus. There were rallies and protests and art installations. But I didn't partake, and it was basically easy to cultivate friendships and networking with apolitical people.

> From my personal experience, it was hard to completely avoid them

> I was definitely in touch with the communist/socialist underbelly of dissenters there [...] I read the on-campus commie newsletter that was distributed free.

Basically, this doesn't sound like disagreement to me. You did come across political activism, and you have some minor exposition. Granted our experience may be different, since we attended different universities at different times ; and so the magnitude of political activism was likely different. But academic freedom is a core tenet of western universities, and that means political life has always been part of campus life.

You seem to draw the limit at "attending protests", but this is an arbitrary limit. If, instead of profiling who attended the protests, the inquiry had been a network graph analysis of the commie underground, you may well have been listed.

Political rights are protected in the US. They don't have an arbitrary threshold such as "it's fine to read the commie newspaper but it's not fine to protest a topic". You draw an arbitrary limit which sets you on the good side, but what happens in reality is that this article questions whether it's fine for some government entity to draw that arbitrary line as they see fit. That's not exactly the same thing.

I think most countries on earth have very little tolerance for visitors protesting against the government.

Yes. And whether protests should be allowed or not as part of the visa is a different discourse, but most countries simply forbid it.

And probably bought a pizza at some point, too. That's not studying. Shameful liar.

That's not a meaningful comparison. Eating a pizza isn't the same as violating the terms of your visa - which is an explicit contract between you and the country you're entering which you sign before you enter the said country.

Please quote the clause he violated in said contract.