That is not always true: top tier companies like FB (the subject of this article), Google pay internationals the same as locals. As for the issue of rights I fully agree: much better to instead give foreigners much more security when they immigrate in terms of visas.
My point is not that the US should act directly in the interests of citizens of other countries. My point is instead that the US should act in its own interests. The US is a successful country today in large part due to its companies (a large part of which were founded/co-founded by migrants e.g. Google). If the US gives priority to mediocre locals versus good internationals, companies will have access to a weaker talent pool and suffer. Of course, I'm of course not saying internationals are always better than US candidates (in the obvious case where an American is better than the competition, hire them by all means).
Would you rather a weaker economy but mediocre people get protected, or the less xenophobic approach: a stronger economy and more competition?
That's not what I said. Yes, some students (a small minority) will be acting in the interests of other countries. Overall, the US is a net winner in terms of benefits vs costs of foreign students. This is one of the reasons many colleges are currently under strong financial strain: no international students to pay the bills. Would you rather close borders to all foreign students?
You can boost the local education all you want (definitely worth it), you will never to grow locally the large volumes of talent necessary to run a globalized economy. Researchers, highly trained SEs etc are in high demand and there is simply not enough local supply to match.
That's not quite true in my opinon. Take your example of academia. Many students will chose to stay in the US after (if they can, because salaries tend to be higher than in many other countries) rather than depart. Also, instead of "taking" knowledge, they might actually create some new knowledge. Think about how many brilliant professors in US universities were once foreign post-docs there. If the US chooses to close its borders to this sort of talent, it will considerably weaken itself in the longer term against countries enacting more rational immigration policies.
That's true, but there are many ways to "serve the nation". Note that a foreigner who comes to work in a country will also be a tax payer, the same way a US citizen is. In addition, given the barriers to entry, they might be more qualified than the equivalent "native" employee (since the company is willing to pull the extra effort). They might become citizens after some time as well. Also, if you make it hard to hire necessary talent from abroad (as is the case in the US, and to a lesser extent in Europe as well), you end up making your own companies weaker in the process.
Alternatively, hiring internationally should be made a lot easier for highly technical roles. Facebook pays its foreign hires the same as Americans, so as to retain them. Making it easier to hire the most suited person (without thinking about nationality) would make more sense than making them dance around legal barriers like they currently have to.
An easy way to solve this issue would be to just liberalize the whole immigration process: for e.g. software development, research and any technical field, make it equally easy to hire either Americans or foreigners (whichever person is best for the role) on the basis of competence only. That would make the process more fair both to Americans and non-nationals and would ensure the best person for the job gets retained, rather than either the one lucky enough to be born on one side of an imaginary line, or the foreigner who might be hired simply because cheaper/harder to leave company.
From what I can tell as a complete layman, the title is quite sensationalist: the only process being reversed is telomere lengthening, which has a tenuous relationship with aging at best.