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IMMIGRATION FILES – BRAIN DRAIN 3

BACKGROUND 4NOTES FROM THE AUTHORS 5BRAIN DRAIN 101 6RELATED CONCEPT – BRAIN CIRCULATION 7RELATED CONCEPT – BRAIN GAIN 8RELATED CONCEPT – BRAIN TRAIN 9RELATED CONCEPT – BRAIN RAIN 10RELATED CONCEPT – BRAIN WASTE 11RELATED CONCEPT – SKILLED WORKERS 12RELATED CONCEPT – HUMAN CAPITAL FLIGHT 13RELATED CONCEPT – REMITTANCES 14RELATED CONCEPT – REVERSE BRAIN DRAIN 15FROM THE DEBATE 16CON BRAIN DRAIN CONTENTION 17AT: BRAIN DRAIN (JOSH’S SAMPLE BLOCK) 20CON EVIDENCE 22BRAIN DRAIN EXAMPLES – EUROPE 23BRAIN DRAIN EXAMPLES – HEALTH CARE WORKERS 24AT: REMITTANCES – WEAK EVIDENCE 26AT: REMITTANCES – DON’T HELP DEVELOPMENT 27AT: REMITTANCES – HURTS DEVELOPMENT 29REMITTANCES FAIL – HAITI 31REMITTANCES FAIL – INDIA 32REMITTANCES FAIL – PAKISTAN 33REMITTANCES FAIL – PHILIPPINES 34PRO EV 35AT: BRAIN DRAIN – NO IMPACT 36AT: BRAIN DRAIN – NO IMPACT 37AT: BRAIN DRAIN – REMITTANCES SOLVE 39AT: BRAIN DRAIN – NO ECONOMIC IMPACT 40AT: BRAIN DRAIN – NO SOLVENCY 42BRAIN DRAIN GOOD – DEVELOPING ECONOMIES 43BRAIN DRAIN GOOD – SENDING ECONOMIES 44BRAIN DRAIN GOOD – LIST 45BRIAN DRAIN GOOD – INCENTIVES 46BRAIN DRAIN GOOD – KNOWLEDGE 47BRAIN DRAIN GOOD – SOLVES WASTE 48

IMMIGRATION TOPICBRAIN DRAIN

Immigration Files – Brain Drain

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Background

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Notes from the Authors Dearest db8rs,

We hope this file will help your preparation for the upcoming NSDA debates. We are pretty tired, so we just wanted to drop in a couple quick notes about this file:

1) The sample con contention is a little long. Okay, it’s way too long. You will want to simplify it for your cases. We made it this way on purpose so that more details would fit into our demonstration debate.

2) Wait, we have a demonstration debate about this file? Yup. Contention1.com for video or podcast. Check it out.

3) There is a ton of evidence out there about the brain drain and all it’s various effects, both positive and negative. As always, this file is just a starting point, and we hope you will go out and do some additional research to put your own spin and support behind it.

XOXO,

Durkee and Josh

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Brain Drain 101 Definition of Brain Drain

Brain drain can be described as the process in which a country loses its most educated and talented workers to other countries through migration. This trend is considered a problem, because the most highly skilled and competent individuals leave the country, and contribute their expertise to the economy of other countries. The country they leave can suffer economic hardships because those who remain don't have the 'know-how' to make a difference.

Brain drain can also be defined as the loss of the academic and technological labor force through the moving of human capital to more favorable geographic, economic, or professional environments. More often than not, the movement occurs from developing countries to developed countries or areas.

Causes of Brain Drain

There are various causes of brain drain, but they differ depending on the country that's experiencing it. The main causes include seeking employment or higher paying jobs, political instability, and to seek a better quality of life. Causes of brain drain can categorized into push factors and pull factors.

The push factors are negative characteristics of the home country that forms the impetus for intelligent people migrating from Lesser Developed Countries (LDC). In addition to unemployment and political instability, some other push factors are the absence of research facilities, employment discrimination, economic underdevelopment, lack of freedom, and poor working conditions.

Pull factors are the positive characteristics of the developed country from which the migrant would like to benefit. Higher paying jobs and a better quality of life are examples of pull factors. Other pull factors include superior economic outlook, the prestige of foreign training, relatively stable political environment, a modernized educational system to allow for superior training, intellectual freedom, and rich cultures. These lists are not complete; there may be other factors, some of which can be specific to countries or even to individuals.

Effects of Brain Drain on the Home Country

When brain drain is prevalent in a developing country, there may be some negative repercussions that can affect the economy. These effects include but are not limited to:

Loss of tax revenue Loss of potential future entrepreneurs

A shortage of important, skilled workers

The exodus may lead to loss of confidence in the economy, which will cause persons to desire to leave rather than stay

Loss of innovative ideas

Loss of the country's investment in education

The loss of critical health and education services

Brain drain is usually described as a problem that needs to be solved. However, there are benefits that can be derived from the phenomena. When people move from LDC countries to developed countries, they learn new skills and expertise, which they can utilize to the advantage of the home economy once they return. Another benefit is remittances; the migrants send the money they earn back to the home country, which can help to stimulate the home country's economy.

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Related Concept – Brain Circulation

Brain circulation can be defined as the circular movement of skilled labour across nations.

It is an alternative model to the idea of brain drain. The concept of "brain drain" gained popularity as skilled labour from certain countries emigrated to other countries in search of better opportunities. However, sizable numbers of these emigrants might eventually return to their home country when the conditions improve. According to this model, the brain drain effect is temporary.

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Related Concept – Brain Gain

Brain Gain refers to the positive benefits that host countries gain when they accept highly skilled immigrants. A common slogan, though perhaps too simple, argues that one country’s drain is another country’s gain.

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Related Concept – Brain Train

When emigrants leave their home country, they often improve their skills through education and work experience. When (if) they circulate back to their home country, they will bring their new and improved talents back with them, helping their origin country develop. This phenomenon is sometimes called brain train.

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Related Concept – Brain Rain

Just kidding. This isn’t really a thing.

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Related Concept – Brain Waste

Brain waste refers to the unused potential that is lost when workers take unskilled jobs despite having professional qualifications. This can happen on both sides of the immigration spectrum. Sometimes, an individual’s training may out-pace the number of jobs in their home country, so they are forced to migrate or become brain waste. On the other hand, migrants are sometimes forced to take up jobs that do not utilize their skills when they are unable to find employment at par with their qualifications in their new country.

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Related Concept – Skilled Workers

Kinda racist photo that came up when I searched “high skilled workers.” Anyway:

“Another dramatic difference is the current recognition that there are important distinctions among immigrants on the basis of their skill levels, independent of their race and country of origin. The types of skills that constitute high-skilled immigration varies across time. While in the past artisans and craftsmen constituted the elite of the labor force, at the current level of economic development in the advanced knowledge-based economies the high-skilled are the STEM workers – scientific, technical, engineering, and high-level management workers. Even if they work as employees, many of these STEM workers are highly entrepreneurial, developing new techniques, products, markets and inventions, and new ways of using older ideas. They also often move from firm to firm, and from country to country, seeking opportunities where they can advance their skills, as well as apply their skills more fruitfully. STEM workers have become internationally mobile.” - Barry R. Chiswick, George Washington University, “Immigration: High Skilled vs. Low Skilled Labor?,” July 2011, http://ftp.iza.org/pp28.pdf

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Related Concept – Human Capital Flight

Human capital flight is a synonym of brain drain.

Human capital is a term popularized by Gary Becker, an economist from the University of Chicago, and Jacob Mincer that refers to the stock of knowledge, habits, social and personality attributes, including creativity, embodied in the ability to perform labor so as to produce economic value.

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Related Concept – Remittances

When workers leave their home country, they often send part of the money they earn to their families back home. Economists call these flows of money remittances.

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Related Concept – Reverse Brain Drain

Reverse brain drain is a form of brain drain where human capital (high skilled workers) moves in reverse from a more developed country to a less developed country that is developing rapidly. These migrants may accumulate savings (remittances) and develop skills overseas that can be used in their home country. Your coaches are mostly an example of this.

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From The Debate

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Con Brain Drain Contention

Contention 1 – Brain Drain

A world without immigration barriers would seriously harm global development efforts because it would cause developing countries to lose their most talented workers through human capital flight, also know as brain drain. As

Wang Kar Yiu, Professor and Director of the Research Center for International Economics @ the University of Washington, explained in 2009

(“Brain Drain,” The Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy, http://shora.tabriz.ir/Uploads/83/cms/user/File/657/E_Book/Economics/Encyclopedia%20of%20the%20World%20Economy.pdf)

Brain drain is the emigration of skilled and professional workers (such as engineers, scientists, doctors, nurses, and university professors) from a country. These people emigrate legally , become residents or even citizens of a new country (the host or destination country), and stay there with no intention of returning to the source (sending) country. There are two main legal ways for skilled workers to move to another country permanently: direct immigration through official channels, and indirect migration through overseas education. Direct migration refers to obtaining permanent residency directly because the worker possesses a particular skill or is reuniting with family. Indirect, education migration occurs when a university graduate (or graduate of higher education or a training program that qualifies the worker as skilled) goes to another country to pursue further education, but later chooses to stay in the host country and apply for permanent residency after graduation. One important feature of the current system of direct and indirect migration (except for family re- union) is that the governments of the host countries usually accept those workers with great skills and talent, because usually only those who are smart and perform well will be able to find new jobs in the host country to support their applications for permanent residency. Brain drain is usually

associated with developing countries, since most of the movement of skilled workers is from developing to developed countries. Many countries in Asia and Africa experience substantial outflow of skilled workers, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the initial stock of skilled workers, and this can have an adverse impact on the

source countries. Further- more, the big gaps between the wage rates of skilled workers in developed countries and

those in developing countries make brain drain difficult to control .

In fact, legal barriers are one of the few tools that can control the outflow of high skilled workers. As

Kieran Oberman, Postdoctoral Economics Fellow at Stanford University, PHd in Economics @ Oxford, explained in 2012

(“Can Brain Drain Justify Immigration Restrictions?,” http://fsi-media.stanford.edu/evnts/5944/Oberman_BrainDrain_20101.pdf)

This article considers one possible justification for immigration restrictions: that they help to prevent brain drain , the large scale migration of skilled workers from poor to rich states. 2 Brain drain affects many countries throughout the world. In Granada, Haiti and Jamaica, the skilled emigration rate is above 80 percent. In Africa, Cape Verde has a rate of 68 percent, Mauritius, 56 percent, Sierra Leone 52 percent and Ghana, 47 percent.3 While brain drain can have positive effects, particularly for the skilled workers themselves, their families (who often receive remittances) and the rich states that host them, it can impose serious costs for those left behind in poor sending states. The case of Zambia is paillustrative of this. For a population of almost 12 million people, Zambia has only 646 doctors and 6096 nurses. Between 1998 and 2003, 461 Zambian nurses were recruited to the UK. Around half of the 50 to 60 doctors who graduate from the countries only medical school each year, emigrate soon after.4 Brain drain saps Zambia’s power to confront its horrendous levels of malnutrition, disease and ill health. 1.1 million Zambians have AIDS/HIV. Life expectancy is just 40 years.5 In cases of

this sort, brain drain leaves people who are already desperately poor, worse off still.6 If rich states chose to enforce

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immigration restrictions against all skilled workers coming from poor states where brain drain is problem, instead of continuing to offer many of them residency visas, rich states would remove the main incentive these skilled workers have to leave . Conversely, if rich states lifted the restrictions that prevent more skilled workers coming, it would almost certainly worsen the problem. Given the costs that brain drain can involve there seems a strong argument that, in this instance at least , immigration restrictions can be justified.7

Many examples illustrate the danger. As the influential Belgian economists La Croix and Docquier, said in 2010

(David de la Croix and Frédéric Docquier, Belgian Economists, “Do Brain Drain and Poverty Result from Coordination Failures?,” http://ot-ds.sipr.ucl.ac.be/cps/ucl/doc/code/documents/docquier.pdf)

Many observers and scholars have long considered the brain drain as a curse for origin countries in general, and for the developing world

in particular. Although the new literature is less pessimistic, and shows that positive spillovers can be induced by high-skill emigration, it is fairly obvious that the brain drain affects the human capital accumulation and

economic performance of sending countries. It is also largely recognized that lack of economic growth and rampant poverty (going hand in hand with discrimination, political repression and lack of freedoms) is what motivates people to flee their own

country. The interdependencies between high-skill emigration and poverty in developing countries are key to

understanding the process of development. They can be the source of vicious and virtuous circles linked to strategic

complementarities in individual migration decisions. Indeed, when a significant brain drain movement is initiated, it may have damaging effects on the economy and induce other waves of high-skill emigration . On the

contrary, when a significant return movement operates, it gives incentives to other waves of emigrants to return home. History has shown that massive and rapid outflows of high-skill people can generate economic damage which is hard to reverse. An interesting case is that of Iran , where pre-revolutionary economic development was rapid, although unevenly distributed among Iranians. The Iranian brain drain (Torbat, 2002) started with the 1978-1979

revolution and was exacerbated in the early 1980s by the war with Iraq and the decision of the government to reform Iran’s higher education system. The trend continued afterwards and is seen by many observers as one of the most important exoduses of talented

academics, students, and researchers. The pace of growth slowed dramatically after the revolution and Iran is still a lower-middle income economy today. Since 2002, Iran’s parliament has tried to reverse its brain drain but returns are still sporadic. A more recent example is the former Soviet states. Many scientists and academics went abroad after independence. Russian and Moldovian trade unions report that between half a million and a million scientists and professionals have left the country since 1991. This has worsened the economic situation and working conditions at origin; hence, almost none of the brain drain emigrants have returned.

This is not just an isolated example. A 2013 study by Economics Professor Normaz Ismail (Normaz Wana Ismail – Professor of Economics @ Universiti Putra Malaysia and Abubakar Lawan Ngoma - Doctoral Student, Department of Economics, Universiti Putra Malaysia, “THE IMPACT OF BRAIN DRAIN ON HUMAN CAPITAL IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES,” South African Journal of Economics Vol. 81:2 June 2013)

In this paper, we used cross-sectional data analysis for a sample of 90 developing countries to examine the short and long-term impact of brain drain on human capital formation in labour-sending developing countries. In particular, we revisited Beine et al. (2001, 2008) who provided evidence of incentive effects of brain drain on human capital formation in the source countries. Using both secondary and tertiary school enrolments as proxies for human capital investment,

our results based on OLS, and IV estimators indicate that in the short term, the prospect of migration impact adversely on human capital formation in immigrants’ source countries, whereas, the long-term incentive effect is statistically insignificant. Our results suggest that their findings of positive effect of brain gain was influenced by inappropriate specification and unaccounted endogeneity. However, we found remittances to have offsetting effects on human capital leakages that occur as a result of brain drain in the migrants’ source countries. The resurgent “quality selective” immigration policies in developed countries have triggered growing concern among the policy

makers in developing countries over the net effects of their highly skilled workers’ migration. These concerns are not entirely unnecessary given the lack of consensus among researchers on the extent to which skilled migrations foster investment in

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education and the effects of remittances on economic growth in the source countries. However, policy implication that involve

international mobility of skilled labour must be cautiously considered in immigrants’ source countries, as migration of skilled labour has become more unidirectional and relatively permanent (Dustmann and Mestres, 2009). High-skilled migration might lead to potential human capital loss. Moreover, subsidising education might be inefficient if source countries would

eventually lose their skilled professionals through migration. Our analysis, therefore, contributes to the rising concerns that the

globalisation practices might excessively exhaust skills from developing countries and impede their potentials for

growth and convergence. In addition, the growing bias in immigration policies against skilled labour of specific talents w2 ould intensify the costs and effects of brain drain and further delay growth prospects in source countries. Finally, future research should consider other effects of brain drain, such as on remittances and skilled unemployment in immigrants’ source countries.

These factors suggest a major benefit to immigration barriers. As

Mihir A. Desai, Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School and Professor of Law @ Harvard Law School, pointed out in 2001, that

(With Devesh Kapur – Harvard U and John McHale – Queens U, “The Fiscal Impact of the Brain Drain: Indian Emigration to the U.S.,” http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.201.4540&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

The fiscal pressures associated with demographic changes in the developed world have generated pressure for major policy shifts

including changes in immigration policies. These changed immigration policies have the potential to have sweeping impacts on the developing world where highly skilled individuals have , heretofore, been constrained in their emigration decisions by the restrictive immigration policies of developed countries. The increased mobility of these highly skilled individuals is likely to represent a major innovation in flows in the twenty first

century and will potentially have large consequences on source and destination countries.1 This paper argues that the last decade of flows of human capital from India to the U.S. may portend what the scope, magnitude and consequences of those worldwide flows will look like over the decades to come. In response to tremendous demand for

skilled workers, the U.S. implemented a selective, temporary immigration policy for skilled workers during the 1990s that resulted in a dramatic change in the flows of human capital from India to the U.S. As of March 2001, more than a million Indian-born individuals were resident in the United States—a more than doubling of this population since 1990. Of these, more than half were in the fiscally sought-after 25 to 44 year old group, and more than three

quarters of the working age population had a bachelor’s degree or better. Indeed, an estimated 38 percent of this age group had masters, professional, or doctorate degree, compared to just 9 percent with better than a bachelor’s degree in the native-born population. Moreover, the human capital intensity of the flows of Indians to the U.S. has 2 increased substantially during the 1990s. Of the Indians who came since 1990 and were still in the U.S. at the end of the decade, an estimated 78 percent had a bachelor’s degree or better—21 percentage points greater than the cohort who came during the 1980s and were still in the U.S. at the end of that decade.2

Human capital outflows of this magnitude must affect developing countries, including India, in myriad ways—many beneficial. A prosperous diaspora can be a source and facilitator of trade, investment and ideas; a rich vein of remittances; and a potential

stock of high human capital returnee emigrants. However, losing a substantial fraction of its “best and brightest” is likely to have substantial negative effects on a country as well. The loss of skilled workers will harm cooperating

factors— complementary skilled workers, less-skilled workers, entrepreneurs, and capital providers. The outflow of talent will also make the country less attractive as a destination for foreign direct investment and potentially stunt the development the needed critical mass for successful high tech nology clusters . Critically, it may have deeply inimical consequences on a country’s institutions, for instance its universities , affecting its longterm development.3

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AT: Brain Drain (Josh’s Sample Block) 1. Brain drain has no impact.

Sebastian Mallaby is Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Sept 28, 2015. “How to Understand the Economic Impact of Migration.” https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-09-28/net-benefits

A large economics literature has sought to untangle migration’s national and regional impacts. From the point of view of countries from which migrants emigrate, the findings are mixed, but probably more positive than most people imagine. For one thing, emigrants from developing countries remit around $440 billion annually to relatives at home, a transfer that is three times the size of total official development aid worldwide. For another, the loss of productive workers may be less crippling to countries of origin than is frequently assumed. It is often asserted, for example, that Africa’s health services have suffered grievously from the exodus of trained nurses and doctors from the continent. But African countries with the largest outflows of physicians as a share of total population, such as Algeria, Ghana, or South Africa, tend to have the lowest rates of child mortality; apparently, enough doctors and nurses stay behind to prevent a breakdown . Likewise, it is easy to lament that Greece’s bankrupt economy has been irreparably damaged by the brain drain of educated twenty-somethings. But Greece has an unemployment rate of 25 percent, and its economy was hardly benefiting from young people who weren’t working. Migrants, in other words, tend to leave places where productive opportunities are meager, and even as they leave, enough workers tend to stay behind to fill those opportunities that remain. Clearly, it would be grotesque to oppose the flood of Syrians to Europe on grounds of an alleged loss to Syria’s economy.

Skilled workers who leave a country do so because they are not being utilized fully, so those that are being utilized stay, while the rest are free to move around without risk to the economy.

2. Forcing skilled people to stay in their country does not make the economy more productive. In order for the con team to win this argument, they must prove that decreasing legal barriers to immigration has resulted in lower productivity in high skilled areas.

3. Skilled workers leaving actually helps their country’s economy.

The Economist. “Drain or gain?” May 26th 2011. http://www.economist.com /node/18741763

Many now take issue with this view (see article). Several economists reckon that the brain-drain hypothesis fails to account for the effects of remittances, for the beneficial effects of returning migrants, and for the possibility that being able to migrate to greener pastures induces people to get more education. Some argue that once these factors are taken into account, an exodus of highly skilled people could turn out to be a net benefit to the countries they leave. Recent studies of migration from countries as far apart as Ghana, Fiji, India and Romania have found support for this “brain gain” idea. The most obvious way in which migrants repay their homelands is through remittances. Workers from developing countries remitted a total of $325 billion in 2010, according to the World Bank. In

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Lebanon, Lesotho, Nepal, Tajikistan and a few other places, remittances are more than 20% of GDP. A skilled migrant may earn several multiples of what his income would have been had he stayed at home. A study of Romanian migrants to America found that the average emigrant earned almost $12,000 a year more in America than he would have done in his native land, a huge premium for someone from a country where income per person is around $7,500 (at market exchange rates).

Plus the Mallaby evidence says that remittance are 3 times the size of official development aid worldwide, that $440 billion dollars. Remember the resolution says on balance for societies, that means that the pro impacts outweigh any small negative effects from a migration of skilled workers.

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Con Evidence

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Brain Drain Examples – Europe

Joining the EU forced a bunch of Easter European countries to give up their legal barriers – the result was a damaging brain drainThe Economist 2016

(“Needed but not wanted,” http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21707835-economic-migrants-are-seen-threat-jobs-and-welfare-state-reality-more)

Other elements of migration are more controversial. If host countries benefit from immigrants, then the countries that send them must be losing out on manpower, skills and tax revenue. The people who move are often the brightest and best—those with the get-up-and-go, the languages and the connections—so their country of origin may suffer a brain drain. A recent paper from the IMF puts a number on this. Between 1990 and 2012 almost 20m people moved from central, eastern and south-eastern Europe to richer countries in western Europe. This east-west migration accelerated after 2004 when eight eastern European countries, including Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, joined the EU. The IMF researchers reckon this exodus lowered cumulative population growth in labour-sending countries by eight percentage points. If those mostly young and skilled workers had stayed put, the gap with the EU in income per person would have been five percentage points narrower.

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Brain Drain Examples – Health Care Workers

Demand for health care workers in developed countries are huge and growing – reducing immigration barriers will result in a huge influx of foreign talent

Stephen Bach, Professor of Management at King’s College, 2006

(“International Mobility of Health Professionals: Brain Drain or Brain Exchange?” August, Research Paper, UNU-WIDER, United Nations University (UNU), No. 2006/82)

The renewed interest in the mobility of health professionals since the late 1990s has been viewed as ‘primarily demand led with

workforce shortages in some destination countries (such as the US and UK in particular) triggering active

overseas recruitment strategies’ (Stillwell et al. 2004: 597). The dominant dynamic in recent years has therefore been the pull factor of targeted international recruitment which helps to account for why policy attention has focused on the ethical responsibilities of

employers (Buchan 2004: 15). Due to a changing demographic profile—an ageing population (including an ageing health

workforce), increased demand for health care, increased expectations of patients, and difficulties in recruiting and retaining nurses, both the US, the UK, and Canada have recruited actively on an international basis. These strategies aim to overcome workforce shortages and the uneven distribution of the health professionals in terms of geographical location, specialty and grade. The labour market for physicians is distinctive but many of the same difficulties

arise, especially in rural areas and less attractive specialties. A variety of immigration regimes exist that enable health professionals to gain temporary or more permanent residency. In the case of the UK, applicants from outside the EU have to apply for a work permit before being allowed to take up UK employment. A visa is issued for a limited period of time, frequently two years in the first instance. The US has a more diverse and complex system. International medical graduates in the US can gain three year H-1B visas for a pre-arranged job, usually renewable for one three year period. An exchange visitor visa (J-1) is commonly used for graduates of overseas medical schools to gain access to medical education, usually residency programmes, with a requirement that they return to the home country for two years. The only exception to the two-year home residency rule is when a waiver visa is received (J-1 waiver programme), which requires sponsorship by a government agency. In return for a service commitment in a rural area, permanent residency may be

gained. The overall trend within OECD countries has been towards the relaxation of quotas and other mechanisms to

attract highly skilled labour in shortage occupations whilst restricting entry amongst low skilled workers. The opportunity for health professionals to be more mobile has been facilitated by the growth of more formalized channels of recruitment, with increased awareness of the role of commercial recruitment agencies and an increasingly important role for the internet. It is important, however, not to lose sight of the significance of social networks drawn upon by newly arriving migrants in reducing the costs and risks associated

with migration (Massey et al. 1993). This implies that once migration pathways are established this will stimulate further migration. This is an important issue that is rarely acknowledged in the analysis of health professionals’ migration. The growth of overseas nurse associations and other support networks in the destination country, for example, of Filipino, Guyanan, Jamaican, Nigerian, and South African nurses in the UK, comprise an important element in networks that foster further migration. A very high proportion of the doctors interviewed in New Delhi reported the existence of overseas friends as a key source of inspiration for out-migration (Khadria 2004: 20).

Lots of examples prove the impact can be hugeStephen Bach, Professor of Management at King’s College, 2006


It is amongst African countries that the effects of ‘brain drain’ have exacerbated a deepening health sector human resources crisis. This catastrophe is reflected in the extent to which the proportion of health workers to the population has stagnated or declined in nearly every African country since 1960 (see Liese et al. 2003; PHR 2004). In conjunction with other aspects of the working environment, migration has been a contributory factor to the problems faced by African health systems, as signified by high

vacancy rates. In Ghana, the medical vacancy rate in the public sector was 47 per cent in 2002 and was even greater—57 per cent—for registered nurses (Dovlo 2003: 2). Data from Zambia and Zimbabwe indicate a similar picture of attrition from public health employment, with losses of 15-40 per cent per annum. During the 1990s, 1200 physicians were trained in Zimbabwe; only 360 were still practising in the country by 2001. Pharmacists comprise another professional group that are emigrating from African countries in increased numbers (PHR 2004: 19-20). Much recent attention has focused

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on South Africa. The scale of South African migration has increased substantially in recent years, with many registered nurses moving to the UK (see Table 3). Confirmation of this trend can be gleaned from the number of nurses seeking verification of their qualifications prior to applying for overseas employment which increased from 511 in 1995 to 2,543 in 2000 (Xaba and Phillips 2001: 2-3). South Africa has also been a significant host country for health professionals from other parts of Africa and there are 450 Cuban physicians practising in South Africa. Since October 2001, however, South Africa has committed itself not to recruit nurses or physicians from other countries that face shortages, except under the specific agreements with source country governments, which has provoked criticism in South Africa (Dumont

and Meyer 2004: 134). In Europe, historical links play a part in explaining flows of physicians between North Africa and France. The

European Union (EU) has been keen to promote the free movement of labour within the Union as well as encouraging migration into certain regions and sectors. The liberalization of labour markets and the mutual recognition of qualifications is a necessary but not sufficient condition to stimulate mobility. The movement of nurses and physicians between countries remains at a relatively low level partly attributable to linguistic and cultural barriers (Jinks et al. 2000). The context is

altering, however, since the enlargement of the EU to incorporate ten countries from Central and Eastern Europe in April 2004. There are indications that the movement of physicians and nurses from countries including Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary will be a more significant feature of health professional mobility in the EU than in the past.

Remittances don’t solve health care crisis because they don’t get spent in the health care sectorStephen Bach, Professor of Management at King’s College, 2006


Much attention has focused on remittances. It is difficult to estimate the scale of remittances because of the often informal manner in which they are returned but there is little doubt of their contribution to the national income of many countries. India (US$11.5 billion), Mexico (US$6.5 billion) and Egypt (US$3.5 billion) received the largest share of remittances (IOM 2003: 2). There are few studies of remittances specifically related to the health sector. An exception is a study of Filipino physicians practising overseas in which it is suggested that the volume of remittances was sufficient to compensate for the associated economic losses of emigration (Goldfarb et al.

1984). Nonetheless the study is far from conclusive because as the authors acknowledge their analysis is weakened by data

limitations and the questionable assumptions incorporated into their model. A number of caveats have been raised about their impact because remittances benefit the families of migrant health professionals rather than the health systems that they leave behind and are therefore used to boost private consumption rather than investment (ICFTU 2004: 2).

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AT: Remittances – Weak Evidence

The risk of any of these arguments should be taken with a grain of salt – little actual data exists to support real study of remittance levels or effectsPaul Harvey, Research Fellow in the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) at the Overseas Development Institute, and Kevin Savage, Research Officer with HPG, May 2007, “Remittances during crises Implications for humanitarian response,” http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/download/228.pdf

Data on remittance flows suggests that they have grown rapidly in recent years, but there is a need to recognise that this reported growth is also due to improvements in data recording, the increased scrutiny of remittance flows with respect to money-laundering and terrorism

and the depreciation of the US dollar. The dataset being used to analyse remittance flows is often of questionable quality (Kapur, 2005). There is an almost complete lack of official data for many of the very poor and crisis-affected countries of most concern to humanitarian actors. International Monetary Fund (IMF) balance of payments statistics, for instance, show no data for most of the countries subject to UN consolidated appeals, including Afghanistan, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Iraq and Zimbabwe (IMF 2004, 2005, 2006).

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AT: Remittances – Don’t Help Development

Remittances don’t help development – 3 Reasons --- 1. Remittances = volatile, 2. Remittances don’t develop – they pay for food, 3. High skilled workers don’t remitMichael J. Trebilcock, Professor of Law and Economics, University of Toronto, Faculty of Law and Matthew Sudak, J.D. @ U Toronto, April 2006, “SYMPOSIUM: A TRIBUTE TO THE WORK OF KIM BARRY: THE CONSTRUCTION OF CITIZENSHIP IN AN EMIGRATION CONTEXT: SYMPOSIUM: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION,” 81 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 234, ln

Remittances are not without their possible drawbacks. First, they can be volatile. The IOM calculates that in the case of Egypt the standard deviation from annual averages in remittance payments between 1980 and 1999 was seventeen percent, fifty

percent in the case of Cameroon, and over one hundred percent in Botswana, Ghana, Lesotho, and Nigeria. n102 Volatility might

make it difficult to make long-term plans that would put remittance payments to their most efficient uses, and could in some situations create a culture of dependency (although given that most remittances are sent back to support family members, it is unclear whether such dependency on family members is a priori objectionable). n103 Second,

remittances are often used to finance consumption purchases such as food, medicine, televisions, and clothing,

which may not have significant development benefits, especially if the consumption is of imported goods. n104 Third,

it is not entirely clear whether the intuition that emigrants with higher incomes remit greater amounts to

their home country holds. In fact, Lindsay Lowell suggests the opposite: "Education tends to reduce the likelihood that a

worker remits" (in part because more highly skilled immigrants tend to come from families with less pressing financial needs, and in part because they tend to integrate more fully into host country societies), although the substantiating data is weak. n105 Ultimately, while remittances may entail certain risks, little empirical work has tracked the actual effect of remittance payments, or even the characteristics of those who send remittances. Whether remittance payments on their own are a net benefit is a question less complex than whether remittance payments might sufficiently spur development to offset the human capital concerns raised above. That question is largely an open one.

Zero proof that remittances increase economic growth or development—IMF study of 84 countries refute their claimAdolfo Barajas, IMF economist, et. al., July 2009, “Do Workers’ Remittances Promote Economic Growth?,” http://www.iadb.org/intal/intalcdi/PE/2009/03935.pdf

Beyond the fact that remittances alleviate poverty, however, their macroeconomic impacts are not well understood. Given their effects on consumption, effects on short-term output from fluctuations in remittance flows are

to be expected, and a few papers have estimated remittances multipliers for economies such as Pakistan and Mexico3.

But a more pressing question is whether remittances have any long-term effects on economic performance, and in particular, whether remittances can hasten a country’s economic development. This possibility is suggested by the fact that remittances are essentially unrestricted, private financial flows that could finance investment as well as

consumption. In other words, certain aspects of remittances appear, at least on the surface, to be similar to FDI and other private international capital flows, and they may therefore have similar effects on economic growth. Such thinking seems to be popular among policymakers, who increasingly associate remittances with other private capital flows. The discussion of remittances in the UN’s Monterrey Consensus document (United Nations, 2003), which has formed the basis of international development finance policy since 2002, is a case in point. Remittances are mentioned only once, in Paragraph 18, and then only in the context of urging countries to reduce the costs of sending remittances internationally. But the very same sentence also goes on to urge countries to “…create opportunities for development-oriented investments, including housing.” (United Nations, 2003, p. 9) Remittances are thus being associated with other private investment flows, albeit tentatively. The U.S. State Department, on the other hand, has been much more forward about suggesting that remittances can play an important role in development finance and promoting economic growth. Its 2005 document, the U.S. Approach to International Development: Building on the Monterrey Consensus (U.S. Department of State, 2005), labels remittances as a “development resource” and places remittances in the same category as domestic savings and foreign private investment. A search on the State Department’s website reveals dozens of official statements and remarks made by officials emphasizing the size of remittances sent from the U.S. and suggesting that these funds are being used to facilitate economic development in the recipient countries. For example, a press release produced by the State Department in 2007 again places a statement about the amount of remittances sent by US residents directly after a statement about the amount of FDI

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originating from the US. The continual association of remittances with FDI in the State Department’s public statements clearly implies that these officials consider the two types of flows to be fundamentally similar in their economic impact. Policy-oriented economists have also made similar claims about remittances. Ratha (2003), for example, calls remittances “an important and stable source of external development finance” but mainly suggests that remittances could and should enhance economic growth rather than show that

remittances have actually done so. Given the importance that policymakers and economists increasingly place on remittances as a potential source of development finance, it is critical to know whether this optimism is truly warranted. A systematic analysis of how remittances could affect growth, followed by robust empirical evaluation of this relationship, would provide a better foundation for development policy, especially if remittances are found not to have a positive impact (or any impact) on economic growth. In this case, policymakers could focus their efforts on two areas: finding ways to channel remittances into

uses that do enhance economic growth, and promoting other activities that facilitate economic development. This paper provides

the systematic theoretical analysis and robust empirical estimation mentioned above, using the most accurate and comprehensive remittances data available. Starting from an initial database encompassing 84 recipient countries and annual observations for the 1970–2004 period, we estimate panel growth regressions both on the full sample of countries and for emerging economies only. We introduce a new instrument for remittances and a complete set of conditioning variables that resolve the weaknesses of previous empirical work. Thus,

our estimations represent the most reliable information produced on the remittances-growth relationship to date. Unfortunately, our results demonstrate that remittances have had, at best, no impact on economic growth.

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AT: Remittances – Hurts Development

Remittances create dependency and don’t promote investment necessary for investmentFelix Blossier, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, “Migradollars and Economic Development: Characterizing the Impact of Remittances on Latin America,” 5-6-2010, http://www.truth-out.org/migradollars-and-latin-americas-economic-development59237

First of all, their impact on poverty reduction is rather modest. In other words, remittances lack a truly decisive redistributive effect. The money received by people living in rural areas will be mostly spent in urban economic centers and are mainly likely to increase the consumption of goods and service produced in those areas. Remittances are not necessarily aimed at the poorest citizens, and it is the cities that tend to benefit the most from the aforementioned multiplier effect. Although remittances are definitely a stimulus for development, they are far from being an unqualified bonanza, especially when one takes into account the harsh, profound effects of

migration on individuals and communities. In addition to the emotional pain, migration is combined with the curse of a brain drain, which has proven catastrophic on some Caribbean islands, such as Haiti, Jamaica, Grenada, as well as in Guyana on the mainland. Astoundingly, these island nations have lost on average more than 80% of their college graduates. Furthermore,

those trends can even accelerate the “Dutch disease effect” in the long term, as this outflow in labor supply combined with real exchange rate appreciation pressures due to the exportation of natural resources, can lead to competitiveness issues. Finally, the effects of remittances on poverty reduction and economic

development are more efficient in countries that benefit from stable institutions. But most of the time, remittances only have a temporary impact, as they are spent on basic needs and do not contribute to the formation of human capital, thus relieving the plight of poverty only for a relative brief respite, while not providing long term development or infrastructural improvement for the affected individual. As Guillermo Perry, former Chief Economist of the Latin American and Caribbean Bureau at the World Bank, has noted: “In other words, remittances are a complement to, rather than a substitute for, good economic policies.”

Remittances cause Dutch Disease – causes economic and competitiveness declineFederico S. Mandelman, a research economist and assistant policy adviser at the Atlanta Fed. and Courtney Nosal, an economic analyst at the Atlanta Fed, Third Quarter 2008, “Remittances Ebb and Flow with the Immigration Tide”, Volume 10, Number 3, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, http://www.frbatlanta.org/pubs/econsouth/econsouth_vol_10_no_3_remittances_ebb_and_flow_withimmigration_tide.cfm?redirected=true

While remittances may bring many benefits to recipient households and economies, they also come at a price. Migration imposes important, immeasurable costs on the family members left behind, particularly on children who grow up with one or both parents absent. In addition, some studies, such as the World Bank 2007 Close to Home report,

associate remittances with a perceptible decline in employment participation of recipients who become accustomed to the steady flows of remittances without any work effort in exchange. A potential economic problem related to these financial inflows is the so-called Dutch disease . This phenomenon, named for the Netherlands' economic condition in the 1970s, involves a sizable appreciation in the real exchange rate and a

resulting loss in international competitiveness as a result of massive inflows of foreign currency to relatively small and underdeveloped economies. This rise in the exchange rate leads to a decline in manufacturing and the export of other goods that are internationally traded and is accompanied by a decline in employment. Dutch disease can undermine the potential performance of business undertakings and, for motivated individuals and would-be entrepreneurs, reinforce incentives to migrate. Fortunately, recipient economies have several policy options to remedy some of these problems, including fiscal policies that encourage employment participation and monetary policies that reduce exchange rate misalignments.

Literature underestimates this problemPaul Harvey, Research Fellow in the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) at the Overseas Development Institute, and Kevin Savage, Research Officer with HPG, May 2007, “Remittances

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during crises Implications for humanitarian response,” http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/download/228.pdf

The largely positive view of remittances as poverty reducing in the current development literature should

not obscure the possible negative consequences of transnationalism, and these need to be taken into account. These include the possible ‘brain drain’ from migrant sending countries and the possible ‘Dutch Disease’ effects of remittances, leading to inflated recipient country exchange rates, which could harm trade competitiveness (World Bank, 2006a). Migration may create new forms of vulnerability if migrants are predominantly from the working age population, leaving those who stay behind with greater numbers of children and the elderly to support. Remittances may help to perpetuate conflict when they provide support to warring parties (this is discussed further in Section 2.4 below) and the obligation to provide remittances may create hardship for those sending them (Horst, 2006b; Van Hear, 2003; Koser, 2001; Riak Akuei, 2005; Jacobsen, 2005).

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Remittances Fail – Haiti Remittances to Haiti fuel donor fatigue – saps foreign investmentIRIN News, 3-11-2010, “US remittances keep the homeland afloat,” http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=88397

The World Bank's Ratha pointed out the "need to leverage these flows for local and national development (without directly interfering with these flows). The challenge would be to tame a temptation on the part of the government and the donor community to treat remittances as a substitute for aid or public spending on rebuilding efforts, especially in communities where migrants' relatives reside."

That’s comparatively more important --- remittances are too small to have a major impactPaul Harvey, Research Fellow in the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) at the Overseas Development Institute, and Kevin Savage, Research Officer with HPG, May 2007, “Remittances during crises Implications for humanitarian response,” http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/download/228.pdf

Remittances are obviously not addressing the larger problems confronting Haiti. Nor can the remittance flows to Gonaives after the storm be credited with having stimulated recovery. Individual families received vital help from relatives, but the limited recovery that occurred is due primarily to international humanitarian assistance. The conditions that exacerbated the flooding and destruction in Gonaives have since got worse. The years 2004 and 2005 were been characterised by political and economic crisis, pushing the population even deeper into

poverty. The Haitian diaspora provides a lifeline to its compatriots, but it is too slender in normal times, let alone in the face of a disaster.

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Remittances Fail – India Remittances don’t solve our taxes impactMihir A. Desai, Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School and Professor of Law @ Harvard Law School, pointed out in 2001, that

(With Devesh Kapur – Harvard U and John McHale – Queens U, “The Fiscal Impact of the Brain Drain: Indian Emigration to the U.S.,” http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.201.4540&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

The results presented in the paper for Indian emigrants to the U.S. indicate a quickly escalating fiscal loss and one that is concentrated amongst Indian citizens living abroad. Additionally, the Indian case shows that although the emigrant population can represent a small fraction of the total population, the fiscal effects are considerable and place an even greater burden on governments trying to develop a fiscal base and shift from indirect to direct taxes. Tax losses are largely income taxes – this greater impact on income taxes impacts the central government disproportionately relative to the states. Moreover, since most remittance-based expenditures are on items like housing and consumer goods, the resulting indirect tax gains accrue largely to the states. These imbalances are likely to have implications for the future of center-state fiscal relations in India.

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Remittances Fail – Pakistan Remittances are insufficient to solve sustainable growthRiaz Haq, President of PakAlumni Worldwide, 12-4-2009, “Remittances Keep Pakistan Economy Afloat,” South Asia Investor Review, http://southasiainvestor.blogspot.com/2009/12/remittances-keep-pakistan-economy.html

The foreign remittances from overseas Pakistanis and private efforts are clearly helpful to the poor in the short to medium term. However, it is extremely important to recognize that the remittances alone are not sufficient for long-term economic progress based on the much needed human development that translates into a highly productive work force contributing to a vibrant national economy. It is absolutely necessary for the Pakistani state to make significant public investments in education, healthcare, infrastructure development and pursuit of good policies and competent governance in the country.

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Remittances Fail – Philippines

Remittances encourage exportation of human capital and don’t spur development investmentsAngelo Goode, International Studies Department, De La Salle University, March 2009, “Global Economic Changes and the Commodification of Human Capital: Implications of Filipino Nurse Migration,” East Asia, 26(2).

Money sent by Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) back to the Philippines is a major factor in the country's

economy, amounting to more than US$17 billion last year in cash remittances according to the World Bank [15]: 43). It is perhaps for this reason that the Philippine economy performed better in 2007 as compared to previous years, marking the country as the fourth largest recipient of foreign remittances behind India, China, and Mexico [15]: 43). Not too long ago, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo coined the term Overseas Filipino Investor or OFI for Filipino expatriates who contribute to the economy through remittances, buying

property and creating businesses [25]. Evidently, national economic and development policies consider and seemingly

encourage the export of Filipino human capital. As it stands however, remittances only prop up the economy in that Filipino families have more spending power, but the money doesn’t go into national investments that can help development in the long run. Anomalies such as this draw attention to the importance of labour migration as a development strategy, and the ways in which migrant remittances can be managed appropriately for the betterment or Philippine society.

Filipinos just pocket the cash and save it for a rainy dayJeremaiah M. Opiniano and Isagani De La Paz, OFW Journalism Consortium, 3-9-2011, “Remittances seen as ‘People Power investment’,” http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/global-filipino/03/09/11/remittances-seen-%E2%80%98people-power-investment%E2%80%99

Based on the ratio of diaspora saving to these four countries’ GDP and domestic savings, the Philippines stands out among the four countries with 13% of GDP and 84% of domestic savings. If the US$21.1 billion estimate holds, the amount is bigger than the US$17.348 billion of cash remittances sent by some 8.5 million overseas Filipinos to the country in 2009. The estimated Filipino diaspora savings is just above a third of the country’s 2010 gross international reserves (GIR) which stood at US$62.371 billion, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas data

show. However, in the BSP’s quarterly Consumer Expectations Survey, overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) allocating their

remittances to investment cannot catch up with the rising number of OFWs who are saving. As of CES’s end-

2010 result, some 5.8% of OFWs set aside their remittances for investment while 43.7% of OFWs save their overseas earnings. In contrast, remittances for debt payments reached 49.8% in this same survey round of the CE Survey. Some 2.8% of the survey’s OFW respondents within the National Capital Region use their remittances for investment, says fourth-quarter 2010 results. In contrast, 9.5% of respondents outside of NCR invest their remittances.

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Pro Ev

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AT: Brain Drain – No Impact

Even when the government pays for education, the amount of remittances pays for the education several times over

The Economist. “Drain or gain?” May 26th 2011. http://www.economist.com/ node/18741763

It is true that many skilled migrants have been educated and trained partly at the expense of their (often cash-strapped) governments. Some argue that poor countries should therefore rethink how much they spend on higher education. Indians, for example, often debate whether their government should continue to subsidise the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), its elite engineering schools, when large numbers of IIT graduates end up in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street. But a new study of remittances sent home by Ghanaian migrants suggests that on average they transfer enough over their working lives to cover the amount spent on educating them several times over. The study finds that once remittances are taken into account, the cost of education would have to be 5.6 times the official figure to make it a losing proposition for Ghana.

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http://www.economist.com/


AT: Brain Drain – No Impact

Greater access to knowledge ultimately better – brain drain losses aren’t sufficiently damaging to offset future gainsAjay Agrawal, University of Toronto and NBER, Devesh Kapur, University of Pennsylvania, and John McHale Queen’s University, 03-2007, “Brain Drain or Brain Bank? The Impact of Skilled Emigration on Poor-Country Innovation,” http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/ajay.agrawal/Documents/Agrawal-Kapur-McHale%20Brain%20Drain%20Mar-20-2007.pdf

The central assumption of our innovation model is that innovation output depends on access to knowledge. This focus on knowledge access allows us to incorporate a range of emigration-related impacts on the domestic economy, including the loss of local knowledge spillovers, the gains via diaspora connections, and the implications of circulation. A limitation of our approach, however, is that we investigate innovation indirectly through our measures of knowledge access. The most important next step is to more directly measure how migration flows affect national innovation. We are currently exploring this question using detailed information on the career paths and productivity of mobile scientists. Two issues in our paper need further investigation. One is whether skilled migration indeed entails a tradeoff between a smaller domestic stock of innovators and larger international networks. We have not addressed the possibility that the domestic stock of innovation-producing talent might actually increase as a result of migration. This may occur because of two possible effects. The first effect arises because the possibility of migration induces higher investments in education due to greater returns abroad (Beine, Docquier and Rapoport, 2001). If these additional investments in human capital are sufficiently large but only a fraction can actually leave, then it is possible that the country will end up with a greater stock of human capital. Although the basic “brain gain” story has some plausibility given the clearly forward-looking nature of the demand for skills, considerable doubts remain as to it its effects. Commander, Kangasniemi, and Winters (2004) as well as Schiff (2005) have argued, for example, that the highest-ability individuals will invest in skills regardless of the prospect of emigrating, but these individuals will be particularly prone to being recruited away when the prospect of emigration is enhanced. Thus, increased investments are likely to only boost the supply of more moderate-ability individuals. A second effect could arise whereby increases in financial remittances may increase investments in education investment by easing binding liquidity constraints (Yang, 2006). Here, too, are contrary effects. For instance, if parents are absent from the household as a result of migration, there could be less parental inputs into education acquisition and greater work pressure on remaining household members. While Yang presents evidence from the Philippines where the former effect dominates, in Mexico’s case the second factor appears to dominate (McKenzie and Rapoport (2006). This issue needs further investigation. A second issue arises from the time-period of the data (which ends in 2000 because of our use of forward citations) and the implications of right-censoring our data. The experiences of countries as varied as Ireland and South Korea and more recently of China point to the importance of changing domestic economic conditions in catalyzing the “brain bank” effect; diasporas have little impact on their home countries as long as their economies remain closed. India’s economic liberalization and recent rapid growth rates are attracting some of its diaspora back in tandem with new multinational R&D investments. This effect may become apparent in the patent data over time. We began this paper by noting the controversy between those who think the emigration of knowledge workers is good for the national economy as it expands the global

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technology pool and those who are concerned about the harm to national innovation. Overall, we find it unlikely that a poor country with a reasonably functioning economy and working hard to absorb the massive stock of available technology is actually better off if a large fraction of its scarce talent resides abroad. To this end, our main empirical results suggest that, in terms of access to knowledge, the localization effect outweighs the diaspora effect: Poor countries are better off if their skilled labor stays home. However, we do not doubt that reallocation to higher productivity environments does increase global innovation and that some of the fruits of that innovation surely do flow back to the poor-sending countries. Examples abound of emigrants from poor countries making great contributions to science. A few also do return to have transformative effects on their home countries, often as institution builders.25 Furthermore, our findings suggest that access to knowledge provided by the diaspora is particularly important for the highest value inventions, those in the extreme tail of the distribution. How important is this minority share of inventions to the overall economy of poor countries? This question sets the stage for future research and contributions to this lively and important debate on the role of migration for economic growth in poor countries.

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AT: Brain Drain – Remittances Solve remittances solveJairam Ramesh, political analyst, 2002, “A taxing idea at the right time?” India Times, http://www.people.hbs.edu/mdesai/TaxingIdeaToI102002.pdf]One development that might weaken the case for a Bhagwati tax on skilled Indians abroad is the growth of remittances which is presently averaging $ 8 billion annually. In the late 1970s and through the 1980s, the bulk of these remittances came from Indian workers in the West Asia. But there has been a shift in the composition in the last decade and probably close to half of the remittances are now coming from the US and other western countries. These remittances , along with software export earnings, show up as invisibles in the country’s current account balance. They have helped keep India’s current account deficit down to very safe levels .

Remittances solve any economic lossACP, American College of Physicians, 2008, “THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL GRADUATES IN THE U.S. PHYSICIAN WORKFORCE,” http://www.acponline.org/advocacy/where_we_stand/policy/img_paper.pdfSome have cited the remittance (the money that migrants earn working abroad that they send back to their home country) and the increased opportunities for clinical and educational collaboration that are established as a result of emigration as evidence of a "brain gain." In many countries, remittance is a crucial source of foreign exchange. In 2004, global remittances to developing countries reached $160 billion, almost equal to foreign direct investment flows to developing countries in the same year, estimated at $166 billion (20). In fact, in Mexico annual remittances have reached $20 billion annually, and are second only to petroleum as a generator of national wealth (21). A study focusing on physicians from the Philippines practicing overseas estimated that remittances were large enough to compensate for the economic losses associated with their emigration (22). A 2006 article in Globalization and Health postured that Malawi could also benefit from the export of health professionals provided the state could be compensated for the cost of training health professionals who have emigrated (21).

Remittances and contact ensure sending countries benefit – empirically proven ACP, American College of Physicians, 2008, “THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL GRADUATES IN THE U.S. PHYSICIAN WORKFORCE,” http://www.acponline.org/advocacy/where_we_stand/policy/img_paper.pdfAn argument can also be made that home countries can benefit from IMG emigration through remittance, transfer of skills, and possible investment upon a migrant's return. For example, the information technology (IT) and engineering migrations that have occurred since the early 1960s have allowed for the big boom in the Internet and technology sectors. This boom eventually led to a global IT boom in developing countries, such as China and India.

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AT: Brain Drain – No Economic Impact Brain-drain doesn’t negatively affect the economyFrédéric Docquier, FNRS, IRES, Université Catholique de Louvain and IZA and Hillel Rapoport, Department of Economics Bar-Ilan University, 06-2007, “Skilled Migration: The Perspective of Developing Countries,” IZA http://ftp.iza.org/dp2873.pdf

Our analysis has so far focused on the long run steady state. In the short run, with unanticipated migration, emigration of educated workers is a net loss to the home country. As time goes by, however, successive cohorts adapt their education decisions and the economy -wide average level of education partly (as in Figure 4a) or totally catches up, with a possible net gain in the long run (as in Figure 4b) thanks to the various channels detailed above. On the transition path, additional effects are likely to operate. In particular, there is a large economic and sociological literature emphasizing that the creation of migrants’ networks facilitates exchanges of goods, factors, and ideas between the migrants’ host and home countries. In this section we consider two types of migrant network effects: networks that encourage trade, FDI inflows and technology diffusion, and networks that encourage further migration.

Brain-drain doesn’t hurt losing economies – increases overall incentive for educationSimon Commander, London Business School, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and IZA Bonn, Mari Kangasniemi, University of Sussex and L. Alan Winters University of Sussex, CEPR and Centre for Economic Performance, 06-2003, “The Brain Drain: Curse or Boon? ,” IZA, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=422547

The possibility of migration raises expected welfare for anyone who takes education. Hence there is an increase in aggregate private income, although, of course, some individuals who do not manage to emigrate will regret their education decisions ex post. The uneducated see no direct change in private returns and welfare and consequently gross private income rises when migration is permitted. What happens to aggregate welfare, of course, also depends on the social benefits of education. Fundamental to this story is that every educated individual has probability p of emigrating - hence all of them experience increased expected returns, so that in our linear example line "E (with educ and migrn)" lies uniformly above "with educ". But now suppose that the country or organisation of immigration c an screen migrants perfectly for ability. They admit immigrants but only from the top echelons, so that if, say, they want M people from our target country, they get the top M lying between AM and Amax in Figure 4.2. If this is known, the incentives for individuals with ability below AM are unchanged. The private returns to education follow the thick line in Figure 4.2. (Amax - A*) are educated, of whom (AM - A*) remain. The increment to total private income is larger than if the migrants had been randomly selected, because the same number of migrants makes gains but no -one makes ex post education decisions that they regret. However, there is a loss of social welfare of dM, as M educated people are lost and the social welfare was proportion d of the number of educated individuals. Clearly perfect screening is implausible, but even with imperfect screening all that would happen is that the vertical section of the thick private returns line would become sloped. But for so long as it meets "with educ" above A*, offering migration would affect no -one's education decisions. Thus, a necessary criterion for a beneficial brain drain to have any chance of applying is that the marginal person in education has a positive probability of emigrating. Of course, actual decisions about education are taken with respect to subjective probabilities of migration not ex post observed probabilities. Thus, if individuals are overly optimistic about their

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prospects, marginal candidates may believe they face improved expected returns even when they do not. In line with most long -run modelling, however, we discount ever- lasting errors of this sort and presume that eventually subjective probabilities converge to actual ones. The importance of effective screening is also evident in Stark, Helmenstein and Prskawetz (1997) who distinguish between education and innate ability. For them, the increased incentive to acquire education among less able workers is that, while foreign firms can recognise educational qualifications they cannot, at first, distinguish high from low ability workers. As a result, for a period they offer all migrants with a given level of education the same wage (the mean level averaged over ability for that level of education), with the consequence that less able workers are ‘over -paid’. Over time foreign firms may discern workers' true ability and offer 'appropriate' wages, at which time the benefits of emigration erode and, at least with finite probability, the workers return home. Even if they have acquired no skills or networks abroad, they are better educated than they would have been in the absence of migration. In this case it is precisely the imperfections in screening - how quickly and with what probability foreign firms discern true ability - that create the incentives to acquire education. A possible development of the screening model is that the sending or home country has some unexploited capacity for education, in the sense that the returns to education are primarily determined by the deman d for skilled workers rather than the ability of the population. In this case even a perfectly screened emigration would generate net benefits. Suppose that as the workers between AM and Amax migrated, they left openings for newly educated workers to take jobs with precisely the same returns. The net effect on the home economy would be to have the same number of educated workers as without migration and hence the same spillovers, but M fewer uneducated workers. This would raise average incomes slightly (and average skill- levels, which in some models is important). In addition, the migrants would record positive private gains.

Brain-drain bolsters losing economies through trade-gainsSimon Commander, London Business School, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and IZA Bonn, Mari Kangasniemi, University of Sussex and L. Alan Winters University of Sussex, CEPR and Centre for Economic Performance, 06-2003, “The Brain Drain: Curse or Boon? ,” IZA, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=422547

It is also worth mentioning that the positive effects of brain drain for the sending country could also arise from a different mechanism which is related to the terms of trade as opposed to education. As Davis and Weinstein (2002) point out in their work, a technologically superior country, like the US, is likely to experience inflow of all factors of production, including skilled and unskilled labour. This will eventually lead to deterioration of its terms of trade and consequential gains for the labour-sending country.

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AT: Brain Drain – No Solvency

Forcing educated workers to stay does not necessarily make the country more productive, in many cases they would just remain unemployed


There are more subtle ways in which the departure of some skilled people may aid poorer countries. Some emigrants would have been jobless had they stayed. Studies have found that unemployment rates among young people with college degrees in countries like Morocco and Tunisia are several multiples of those among the poorly educated, perhaps because graduates are more demanding. Migration may lead to a more productive pairing of people's skills and jobs. Some of the benefits of this improved match then flow back to the migrant's home country, most directly via remittances.

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Brain Drain Good – Developing Economies Immigration boosts developing economiesPhilippe Legrain, Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics’ European Institute, 2007, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them

Remittances can do more than just alleviate poverty and contribute to local development; they can also bring benefits to the economy is a whole. Just as money sent home by migrants can cushion the blow of a crop failure for an individual farmer, it can also help offset the impact of a natural disaster or financial crisis on the wider economy, as we saw for the Philippines during the Asian crisis of 1997. One study of thirteen Caribbean countries from 1980 to 2002 found that when the economy shrank by 1 per cent, remittances tended to rise by 3 per cent over the next two years:’ in the two years after a devastating hurricane hit Haiti, for instance, remittances rose from 9.8 per cent of house hold spending to 15.5 per cent. Much as rich-country governments boost spending in recessions to help stabilise the economy — through public—works programmes, and because unemployed and needy people receive welfare benefits — remittances can have similar stabilising effects in poor countries.

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Brain Drain Good – Sending Economies Brain drain good – better for the sending nations economiesPhilippe Legrain, Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics’ European Institute, 2007, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them

More importantly, developing countries can also gain from exporting some of their brainpower. For a start, this may boost the wages of the highly skilled workers who remain, because there are now fewer of them. Moreover, since highly skilled immigrants typical earn more than than low—skilled ones, they are likely to send home more money. For instance, an engineer who earned 5000 a year in a poor country may move to a rich country to earn $30,000 a year and send $5,000 of this home to his elderly parents. Also, many immigrants eventually return home, bringing with them new skills and ideas acquired abroad. And a global diaspora can create networks that stimulate trade and investment and spread knowledge and technology, as Silicon Valley highlights. Just look at how Peter Jackson, the director of Lord of the Rings and King Kong, has injected new life into the film (and tourism) industry in his native New Zealand, not least by filming those ‘Hollywood’ movies there. The possibility of working abroad and earning higher wages may also encourage more people in developing countries to acquire skills and education — and not all of them will end up migrating. One study finds that an increased opportunity for migration increases investment in education and skills and that this gain outweighs the loss of brainpower from migration.4 All these benefits may boost economic growth and more than compensate developing countries for the loss of some of their highest-skilled workers. Countries such as China, Cuba, India, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam all have programmes to encourage highly skilled workers to emigrate, which suggests that their governments believe the benefits outweigh the costs. India, which produces more highly qualified people than it can employ, is pressing at the World Trade Organization tor rich countries to grant more temporary work visas to its skilled workers. But in order to ensure that their brain drain turns into a brain gain, developing countries need to make the most of their networks of emigrants, as Somaliland has done with the University of Hargeisa.

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Brain Drain Good – List

Laundry list of reasons why brain drain has positive results on economies

Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah Secretary General and CEO of CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation since January 2013. “Reassessing the Impacts of Brain Drain on Developing Countries.” Migration Policy Institute. August 1, 2005. http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/reassessing-impacts-brain-drain-developing-countries

For a start, it is worth noting that some of the simplistic assumptions made about brain drain may not actually hold. For example, some of those who migrate return, often with greater skills. Some of those who move from a developing country have received education elsewhere, subsidized by the host country or private means. By staying away after they finish studying, these students may not fulfil the potential contribution they could make to their countries of origin. However, the cost of their departure, at least in terms of the public purse in the sending country, may not have been large. In some cases, those who leave have been unemployed or underemployed at home, so their departure may not actually result in a huge loss to the sending country. For instance, the Philippine government continues to support its temporary contract-worker program so that unemployed, skilled workers can find work abroad In other cases, the departure of skilled workers is compensated for by the arrival of skilled workers from another country. As described in a special chapter in the OECD's 2004 Trends in International Migration, the classic case of this domino effect is of South African doctors moving to developed countries while being replaced by Cuban doctors. At the theoretical level, economist Oded Stark and others have argued that brain drain may lead to positive results. Even in the poorest of countries (Cuba may well be a good example), the prospect of being able to emigrate may increase incentives to acquire education and skills and induce additional investment in education. When this domestic "brain gain" is greater than the "brain drain," the net impact on welfare and growth may well be positive. In other words, even in the presence of a brain drain, the average education level of those who remain may be higher than it would have been without migration. While economist Maurice Schiff and others have shown that Stark's thesis is by no means proven beyond doubt, it is important to note that brain drain need not have negative impacts on a sending country's stock of education and skills. In addition, it is important to understand that brain drain can only tell part of the story about migration's overall impact on an economy or society. When all the other impacts of migration — such as remittances, inward investment, technology transfer, increased trade flows, and charitable activities of diaspora communities — are taken into account, the net impact may actually be positive. As discussed below, there is a pressing need to develop a more comprehensive balance sheet that can take into account all of these factors.

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Brian Drain Good – Incentives

High skilled immigration increases the incentives for others to develop skills, filling in for the those who left, and increasing skilled labor overall

The Economist. Sep 29th 2016. “Needed but not wanted.” http://www.economist.com/ news/special-report/21707835-economic-migrants-are-seen-threat-jobs-and-welfare-state-reality-more

These results are open to dispute. Migrants typically move from places where economic prospects are poor, making it hard to establish whether weak growth is a cause or a consequence of their leaving. The chance of a better life elsewhere may also create a stronger incentive for those who remain to acquire new skills. Michael Clemens of the Centre for Global Development and Satish Chand of the Australian National University used a natural experiment provided by a military coup in Fiji in 1987 to study the effects of emigration on that country. The economy was split between indigenous Fijians and those of Indian origin. A large chunk of the second group, generally high-skilled, left after the coup. Most of them went to Australia and New Zealand, which admitted well-qualified migrants. It seemed the ideal opportunity to measure the effects of a brain drain.

What the researchers found was that the Indian Fijians who stayed behind started to acquire skills at a faster rate in order to be able to emigrate (or at least to have the option of doing so). They also concentrated on disciplines that allowed them to meet the skills-based immigration criteria most efficiently. The increased investment in skills was large enough to raise the stock of human capital net of the first wave of emigration, in which a fifth of the Indian-Fijian population left. The brain drain was fully offset.

The possibility of migration for skilled workers increases incentives people still in poor countries to seek higher education


The possibility of emigration may even have beneficial effects on those who choose to stay, by giving people in poor countries an incentive to invest in education. A study of Cape Verdeans finds that an increase of ten percentage points in young people's perceived probability of emigrating raises the probability of their completing secondary school by around eight points. Another study looks at Fiji. A series of coups beginning in 1987 was seen by Fijians of Indian origin as permanently harming their prospects in the country by limiting their share of government jobs and political power. This set off a wave of emigration. Yet young Indians in Fiji became more likely to go to university even as the outlook at home dimmed, in part because Australia, Canada and New Zealand, three of the top destinations for Fijians, put more emphasis on attracting skilled migrants. Since some of those who got more education ended up staying, the skill levels of the resident Fijian population soared.

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Brain Drain Good – Knowledge

There is an increased knowledge transfer from immigrants back to their home country, allowing businesses to compete on the world market


Migrants can also affect their home country directly. In a recent book about the Indian diaspora, Devesh Kapur of the University of Pennsylvania argues that Indians in Silicon Valley helped shape the regulatory structure for India's home-grown venture-capital industry. He also argues that these people helped Indian software companies break into the American market by vouching for their quality. Finally, migrants may return home, often with skills that would have been hard to pick up had they never gone abroad. The study of Romanian migrants found that returnees earned an average of 12-14% more than similar people who had stayed at home. Letting educated people go where they want looks like the brainy option.

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Brain Drain Good – Solves Waste

Emigration is good – many countries encourage highly skilled workers to leave to avoid brain wastePhilippe Legrain, Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics’ European Institute, 2007, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them

Yet the costs of high-skilled emigration from poor countries are not always huge. India, for instance, produces more engineers than it could profitably employ, so it loses little when some of them leave. Private medical schools in the Philippines advertise for students, who pay for their own training, guaranteeing them jobs in the US once they graduate. In countries that are desperately poor and badly run, the skills and education of highly skilled workers may be wasted-although their departure may make it less likely that the situation will improve. Some countries, moreover, are simply too small to be able to sustain a large number of skilled professionals. Many may thus face a choice between a ‘brain drain’ and ‘brains in the drain’ – and for the individuals involved, moving to a rich country may therefore be a ‘no-brainer.’

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