If you're gonna name famous people, there's already an O-1 visa program for that.

https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...

I missed this comment, but what does Linus' citizenship status have to do with this? Surely you don't think that conferring a US Passport on Linus made him who he is.

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.

Linus works from home, he could do that from anywhere.

What would it give US if they had Linus as an citizen?

The current immigration regime is still relatively new, it is not as if it has existed for the entirety of the existence of the United States. It's an artifact of the late 20th century, and only just now accelerated in the early 21st. That's barely a single generation. So, no, I don't take it as a given that essentially limitless immigration - even if loosely constrained on "high skill" - is somehow axiomatically good for the United States.

> Do you think we'd be better off if we excluded Musk to hire a native-born American instead in our aerospace industry?

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.