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Debunking the 'brain drain'
myths
By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - For long, developing countries have
bemoaned the flight of their most talented manpower to
Western shores in search of better employment, income,
living and working environments. The phenomenon of the
best and brightest heading overseas has found popular
coinage in the term "brain drain", which has a negative
connotation for the home country. In a finding that
reverses this long-held view, the United Nations
Economic and Social Survey, released this month, says
migration benefits both destination and host countries.
It also says that fears of migrants taking away jobs or
reducing wage rates in the host country aren't valid
either, because migrants expand the demand for goods and
services, add to the growth of the economy and
contribute more to the economy than they take away from
it.
According to the survey, migrants are bigger
contributors to capital inflows in their home countries
than official development assistance (ODA) from the
developed world, with the figure of US$79 billion in
remittances to developing countries last year exceeding
the ODA in the same year. Overseas migrants are also
major investors in their home countries, examples being
the Chinese diaspora that contributes more than 70% of
the net foreign direct investment inflows to China; and
expatriate African technology workers that are
supporting high-tech start-ups in sub-Saharan Africa,
via a program linked with the UN Information and
Communications Technologies Task Force.
The
survey says that 175 million people around the world are
living away from their home countries, and an organized
and calibrated migration across borders could turn out
to be good for both the sending and receiving nations.
Studies of the economic impact of migration indicate "no
significant" decline in wages and employment rates in
the host country. Overall migrant remittances have grown
alongside the rise in international migrants, and are
estimated to have reached $130 billion in 2000, compared
with about $55 billion in ODA. In October this year,
both the World Bank and the Inter-American Development
Bank predicted that migrant earnings transferred to home
countries will soon rise to more than $150 billion
annually.
The price paid by countries of origin
is most of all in lost innovation and creativity. The
countries of origin also have to part with a percentage
of return on their investment in education, estimated at
$640 million a year for emigrants to the United States
alone. In addition, workers abroad do not pay income
taxes in their home countries, an estimated revenue loss
to India, for example, of $700 million in 2000.
But these emigration-related losses tend to be
offset by positive effects. These include an inflow of
remittances, lowering unemployment in home countries,
investment in home countries and the knowledge and
skills that return migrants bring with them, along with
overseas migrants being major investors in their home
countries.
The survey notes that migration's
positive impact on the developed world is accentuated by
its low or declining birthrates. While one in 35 people
in the world is an international migrant, the figure
rises to one in 12 for developed countries. The UN
projects that without migration, the population of the
developed world would fall from 1.2 billion in 2000 to
only a billion by 2050, with immigration expected to
counteract this population decrease. A drastic decline
in population could negatively impact the existence of
pension systems and support ratios - the ratio of people
who have to be supported to the number of people
supporting them. Europe's population will continue to
decline, and the US population will only modestly
increase by the middle of the century. But between 2000
and 2050, the world population will increase by nearly 3
billion, with six countries - China, Indonesia, India,
Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh - accounting for more
than half of that growth.
However, the survey
says that the international community "lacks a
comprehensive international framework beyond existing
conventions and protocols that addresses the wide range
of issues pertaining to international migration.
Migration is a global and transnational phenomenon
involving various parties with differing perspectives
and interests. It therefore calls for a global approach
and global framework." Migration inflows to developed
countries are less than in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, with growth since the 1960s more gradual than
that of international finance flows and trade.
The study notes: "The number of governments
adopting measures to restrict migration has increased
significantly in recent decades: in 2003, one-third of
all countries had policies to lower immigration,
compared with only 7% in 1976."
Rising migrant
earnings and the transfer of technology and investments
- mostly from advanced to poorer nations - have been
offset by social disruptions, broken families and the
exploitation and abuse of migrant workers. "This is only
to be expected," UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says in
a preface to the study. "After all, migration brings
with it many complex challenges - including issues of
human rights and economic opportunity, of labor
shortages and unemployment, of brain drain and brain
gain, of multiculturalism and integration, of refugee
flows and asylum seekers, of law enforcement and human
trafficking, of human security and national security."
But the study argues that without the inflow of
migrants, Europe would have experienced a population
decline between 1995 and 2000. Even with about 5 million
immigrants having arrived in this period, the
continent's population grew by only 600,000. "Migrants
move today predominantly from developing to developed
countries, but the need for migrant labor is also
present in some developing countries, including the
newly industrializing economies of Southeast Asia and
the oil-rich countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council
(Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates)," adds the report.
Thus
the survey concludes that migration remains one of the
last frontiers of globalization. "For the past 50 years,
governments all over the world have undertaken various
liberalization measures in the areas of goods, services
and capital, multilaterally and unilaterally," said UN
undersecretary general for economic and social affairs
Jose Antonio Ocampo. "The basic premise of such policies
is to maximize economic efficiency at the national and
global levels. Yet the current international movement of
people is largely shaped by restrictive migration laws
and policies."
Joseph Chamie, director of the
UN's population division, is quoted as saying that since
September 11, 2001, security concerns have made
migration to developed countries increasingly difficult.
"We have competing interests. Employers are often very
eager to have increased migration for their firms, for
their labor force, governments are often very interested
in bringing in people to meet the needs of the private
sector as well as undertake activities that others may
not want to do such as picking crops or grapes or
fruits," he said. "On the other hand, the public may
have a very different view because they may see people
coming in who are different, their habits are different
and these are challenges the governments will have to
deal with."
Chamie added that migration has
always been central to globalization. "This migration
flow is nothing new. It has been going on for thousands
of years. People have been redistributing themselves all
over the globe. From the very beginning of humanity, you
have seen people move looking for ways to improve their
livelihood and benefit themselves. We have seen them
move across continents, across large bodies of water,"
said Chamie. "It is just recently, the last several
hundred years, that we have had governments and borders
formalizing this process. Now the challenge is how to
make that a win-win situation for all concerned, rather
than a lose-lose situation where everyone loses out -
the migrants, the receiving countries, the sending
countries, the transit countries."
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
(Copyright 2004 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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