Well, my first impression is this is the greatness of America... we get the best of the best of the world, e.g., Einstein, Marconi, and now Filipinos like Wesley So.
The 3 best American chess players are Filipino, Italian and Japanese.
On the other hand, we also tend to get the worst of the world (e.g. the Boston Marathon bombers).
Toppling Magnus is no easy feat. But I guess it’s like boxing or any other martial art or any sport for that matter... There’s always going to be somebody who can kick your butt no matter how good you are.
Actually Fabiano Caruana was born in Miami and grew up in New York. He went to Europe to improve his chess skill and briefly played for the Italian team. When he got to the elite level he moved back to the US. Hikaru Nakamura was born in Japan to an American mother and moved to the US permanently when he was 3 years old, so all of his chess training was in the United States. So, on the other hand is a fairly recent immigrant. I believe he’s working on becoming a citizen.
Apparently you didn’t get the joke. 8~)