Rules that allow tourists to go to school incidentally while in the US.

[jocalevy]

I am Brazilian and am on a sabbatical 5 1/2-month period doing tourism in the US with my wife and three kids (11, 8 and 7). We chose a city as our base and rented an apartment there.

We have been traveling a lot for the past 2 months. During this period, I have been home-schooling my three kids. Homeschooling is working fine. The kids are learning well and at a fast pace, and they are interested. But the two older ones miss having a routine among other kids, and they want to make friends. Basically, they miss having a social life of their own. So we are considering putting them in school for a while.

I hear that under a tourist visa one can go to school only incidentally to doing tourism, and not on a full-time regime. In our case, going to school would clearly be 'incidental' to the purpose of the whole trip. I am not quite sure about the full-time prohibition, though.

Can someone point me the way to find the rules or case-law that clearly says what 'incidental' and 'full-time' mean in this context?

The matter is rather urgent, as school has already begun and my kids will not attend until I make sure it would be lawfull to do it.

[PraetorianXI]

I think that All children have the "right" to attend schools, even those of illegal immigrants currently residing in the US.

However, you enrole them for good, for 1 term (year, semester).

Otherwise you would be "wasting" government/federal resources for them to go to school (school bus, teachers, books, etc). To just pull them out after 2 or 3 months? So they can have a social life? That is irresponsible.

[jocalevy]

Actually, it is a private school I am considering. I believe it does make sense for me to pay for my kids to be in contact and make friends with other kids, in addition to learning.

[PraetorianXI]

Actually, it is a private school I am considering. I believe it does make sense for me to pay for my kids to be in contact and make friends with other kids, in addition to learning.

Then there is no problem. They will not be asked "legal status" or anything, specially at a school who wants your money.

[jocalevy]

Thank you, PraetorianXI.

In addition to being accepted by the school, I wanted to clearly understand the policies applied by the relevant authorities in determining whether or not the fact that B-2 visa kids go to school will violate the limits of such visa, particularly in relation to what they understand as 'full-time course'. I found a mention to a maximum of 18 hours per week in a tourism promotional section of a governmental website, but I could not find any official rule, interpretation, memorandum or policy associated with such "18 hours" notion.

I wonder whether someone in this forum have any contribution in that respect.