Anecdotally speaking, I've personally lived in multiple countries on multi-year-long temporary resident visas without the right to work, because getting the right to work is a separate process from being allowed to be somewhere. So have family members. And in case it makes a difference, which it might, one of those countries was the US.
In fact, did you know, in Canada it doesn't count as work for visa purposes if you work over the internet for a foreign company and get paid into a foreign bank account and don't compete professionally with local interests? (This is a free hot tip for anyone wanting to live in Canada. It might be true in some other places too, but I don't know.)
>Anecdotally speaking, I've personally lived in multiple countries on multi-year-long temporary resident visas without the right to work, because getting the right to work is a separate process from being allowed to be somewhere. So have family members. And in case it makes a difference, which it might, one of those countries was the US.
Usually those long term visas (eg. student visas, I guess) require some sort of extra vetting to acquire (ie. they're not the tourist visas that get auto-issued at the border), and therefore are unlikely to be possessed by "people who aren't supposed to be here", so as a practical matter I agree they should be accepted in place of a "work visa".