Fighting the Brain Drain

...If it weren't for American schools," notes an Israeli official, "our potential engineers couldn't study at all...

...Moreover, Latin American immigration, relatively unrestricted over the years, would have yielded clues to the brain-drain problem under a talent-and-skills immigration law...

...Korea, which has regained only 10 per cent of its 8,000 students who have come here in the last 15 years, hopes to bring back 200 Korean scientists as a start for the newly formed Korean Institute for Science and Technology...

...citizens or resident aliens, and to those whose skills are needed in the U.S...

...schools...

...As one cultural attache from a small Latin American country put it, "In many countries there is no civil service...

...An American Medical Association study reports that of the 47,082 students in graduate medical training in U.S...

...The concern is not only over the skilled people who come to the U.S...

...We even have one student doing advanced nuclear energy," an Ecuadorian embassy official said...

...Under the old immigation laws, admission into the U.S...

...The new law, which came into effect December 1, 1965, sought a more egalitarian distribution of annual quotas, granting priority to people who are relatives of U.S...

...Congress made only a minor revision in the code and that increased the influx of European scientists and engineers 23 per cent the following year...

...According to paho, about 300 Latin American doctors, a number equivalent to the output of three large United States medical schools, leave for the North each year...

...This is a direct consequence of the lack of trained manpower...

...14 in agricultural studies...

...In the State Department, similarly, some officials have cautiously expressed the view that the brain drain may have to be controlled through amendments to the new immigration laws, while other officials pale at any hint of new restrictive immigration measures...

...Our housing concessions are also important," an Israeli official said...

...The figures seem especially dubious where the need to dramatize the loss has influenced worried officials...

...Learning...

...as immigrants in the last five years, and 3,000 of them will probably stay for good...

...The United States, Dr...

...In countries like Iran, foreign study blends tradition and necessity...

...It drains off potential revolutionaries...

...While normal mortgages cover only 40 per cent of the purchase price, returning students get up to 60 per cent of the price through mortgage and they get a longer time in which to pay it off...

...are now rapidly becoming a large source of America's scientific and technical talent...

...For the moment, therefore, long-range solutions seem to be eluding everyone...

...A good number of foreign officials believe their countries should move toward controlling and directing student immigration...

...According to the Pan American Health Organization (paho), over 4,000 university-trained people have entered the U.S...

...after completing all their training at home, but also over the swelling number of foreign students trading in their student visas for immigrant status...

...the rate for Asians in the same category was 182 per cent...

...In strict economic terms, paho estimates that when these people packed their bags, Latin America lost at least $60 million which it had invested in their education and training...

...The value of this migration," he said, "may be estimated for us at $100 million per year, which exceeds somewhat the total value of our foreign aid in the medical field...

...Even scientific and technical jobs change with governments...

...Kelly West of University of Oklahoma's Medical Center told a recent State Department-sponsored conference on the brain drain, has become "heavily dependent" on the inflow of medical personnel...

...the number of Korean immigrants who are professionals rose from 51 in 1965 to 400 last year...

...There are 2,000 Israeli students in the United States, for example, but only about half of them are in the critically needed sciences and technologies...

...Another expert observed that underdeveloped countries often have an ulterior motive for sending students abroad: "It's simple...

...said a Middle Eastern educational attache, "is part of our tradition...

...Thus, while Iran's 1,400 high schools disgorge 40,000 students every year, foreign universities ease the pressure on the country's eight institutions of higher learning...

...What has happened," says an attache in one of Washington's embassies, "is that the spirit of educating foreign students for the good of their countries and the spirit of the new immigration laws just haven't been reconciled...

...And what are you going to do with nuclear energy in Ecuador...

...In the year before the new law came into being, 54 Indian immigrants were listed as professionals while last year the number was 1,750...

...In some instances the reaction to the problem has become visceral, a simple cry of "We want our people back...

...In an effort to fill this void, several governments have begun to actively re-recruit their people abroad...

...Ecuador, a country that must still learn to master its agricultural sector, has 380 young people studying here: 120 of them enrolled in the liberal arts...

...To many observers, the brain drain??whether referring to fully trained immigrants or students-turned-immigrants??is a very elusive concept whose borders are blurred by unreliable statistics...

...The absence of sound data," a paho report said, "has led some people to search for any facts at all that might illuminate the situation...

...A Korean official explained: "Several years ago, we weren't so concerned...

...The point was also made by Jose A. Mora, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, in a speech at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem: "It is estimated that nearly one billion dollars in external funds are not being effectively utilized or remain unused for lack of properly prepared projects or institutions capable of administering programs effectively...

...Or, perhaps more accurately, few people are able to face up to them...

...Consequently, the very countries whose people were once denied entrance into the U.S...

...Ecuador has taken steps to insure job security and better pay in critical fields like nursing...

...It keeps them posted on job opportunities, and it allows them special customs consideration on goods accumulated abroad if they return...

...In 1962, long before the death of the discriminatory national origins law...

...Most homes in Israel, including apartments, have to be bought...

...was based on pre-1925 immigration patterns...

...Others cringe at the mere thought of any measure that "would restrict a citizen's right to travel and follow his own intellectual dictates...

...Government officials and educators here as well as abroad worry that the new regulations, favoring skills and talent are skimming off scientists, technicians and doctors from countries where they are critically needed...

...An uncontrolled student export, it is beginning to be realized, exacerbates the brain-drain problem because students frequently enter fields for which there is little or no demand at home...

...Immigration rates of foreign doctors actually are well bolstered by the number of medical students who come for graduate training and choose to stay...

...Anyone with a sense of immigration history, though, should not have been surprised by the effects of the new legislation...

...Experts say that not only is more statistical study needed, but somebody, someplace will have to sacrifice on principles before any effective stops can be taken to cope with the brain drain...

...Since the flow of people in the early years of the republic was heaviest from Northern European countries, the laws gave the biggest quota allotments to these countries, leaving little to the Mediterranean and Eastern hemisphere nations...

...Israel employs several methods to attract its students...

...John Fried, a new contributor, is on the staff of Life magazine...

...13.829 are from foreign countries and almost 25 per cent will stay here...

...But politics, educational philosophies and educational misguidance also are to blame...

...They come from countries like Colombia where the doctor population ratio is 50 per 10,000...

...By allowing students to go abroad with little or no guidance, however, many countries have become hoist on their own petard...

...Iran sponsors reduced air fares to encourage students to return home for summer vacations...

...Now the cloth is being donned by a growing number of experts who are certain the new immigration is leading to an American intellectual rape of underdeveloped countries??arape that has been dubbed the "brain drain...

...Until recently it was worn with painful pleasure by those who felt the discrepancy between American economic promise and the offer to share it only with northern white Europeans was just cause for mea culpas...

...Better wages, greater professional recognition, favorable working conditions have done their share to lure students into immigration offices in search of more permanent residence...

...Now our industries are becoming increasingly sophisticated and we need people to work in them...

...For Latin America??as for Asia, Africa and England??immigration takes its most serious toll in the field of medicine...