Sure. But the government of the United States is, allegedly, there for the benefit of its citizens. I'm not really following where this "should" comes from. "Should" in what volume? "Should" over what time frame?
The benefit to the US if he is a citizen is that then his taxes flow to the US and if he's resident his local spending flows to the US economy and that of any geo immediate coworkers there for the face time.
https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
Not understanding what point you are making. Is it that any displacement of US citizens' employment via immigration of foreign tech workers is somehow neutered because Linus is really good at writing code and has a US Passport? Anyway, I thought he became a US citizen somewhat recently, well after the bulk of development of Linux. Wikipedia says 2010.
Just going back in time, do you think the US would be better off if we'd excluded Irish immigrants? Italians? Germans? If blocking immigration somehow benefits native-born citizens, you'd logically have to think our population should have stayed the same as it was when we broke away from Britain. We'd be about the size of say Colombia, maybe with a bit higher GPD
Given where he ended up, probably.
Cheap rockets are nice, but speed-running a complete destruction of public trust, culture, and of any illusion that the country is one with rule of law for the benefit of a few insecure billionaire narcissists is a juice that wasn't worth the squeeze.
Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's a net good.
The man himself is an insecure narcissist who can't let any slight, real or imagined go unanswered. It would be sad and funny if he didn't own a speech platform, or hitch himself to an absolutely insane political movement.
>but the population of the United States is 97.9% not from this continent.
This would be a surprise to the 85% of us who were actually born here. In its most simplified form, what those of us who are skeptical of the current immigration regime are wondering out loud is if these processes do actually make "people born in America" better off. "Immigration is always good" has been the mantra since, as you speculate, the 1960s. Probably worth evaluating that idea from first principles from time to time.
It is worth noting, though, that after the peak of immigration in the late 19th century and ending in the 1910s, the United States very intentionally shut off immigration to allow time for assimilation to do its work.
There is a so-called "Technology Alert List" — a list of critical areas (nuclear, missiles, AI, etc.). If a person has a background in one of these areas, they get an automatic U.S. visa refusal during the interview.
Their visa application gets placed on indefinite hold (the so-called "administrative processing"), which can last for years even if it is eventually resolved.
Why? The U.S. government fears espionage. They worry that someone with expertise in a critical field might immigrate to the U.S., secure a job at a company with access to sensitive, export-controlled technology, and then leak that technology to Russia.
Even without espionage, such individuals could gain valuable experience in critical areas and later emigrate back to Russia — a reverse "brain drain."