Marcelo Tosatti, the 18 year-old Brazilian Linux kernel hacker and Linus Torvalds's right hand man, was deported from the US last week because of visa problems.

According to a report in Linux magazine Linux and Main, Tosatti was deported from the US late last week because he only had a tourist visa. He was technically in the country for business purposes.

The programmer works for Linux distributor Conectiva, but was given the job of maintaining the 2.4 Linux kernel tree in November when former Torvalds right hand man Alan Cox decided to spend more time on Red Hat projects.

Since taking up the position, Tosatti has even had a pop at Torvalds and Cox for getting bogged down in politics and letting their moods decide on the direction Linux will take.

Torvalds is currently busy on the development of the 2.5 Linux kernel.

Tosatti acknowledged that the deportation was perfectly reasonable. "I didn't have correct documentation so they had a reason to do it," he said.