1665 



"Paradox'cally, attempts to right an injustice of discriminatoi\y quota 

 systems created a new and unintended problem: a powerful incentive 

 was now given to the professionals in the LDCs to emigrate and thus 

 deprive their developing countries of much needed professional 

 manpower": 



A survey of professional emigration from Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey showed 

 that 50 percent of all their scientists trained abroad did not return home. Another 

 showed that Argentina lost 5,000 engineers through emigration in recent years. 

 And 58 percent of those emigrating from the United Arab Republic (U.A.R.) 

 were scientists; 70 percent held Ph. D. degrees.^^^ 



The most serious professional manpower drain is represented by 

 nonreturning students: 



According to a United Nations manpower report, the number of foreign students 

 studying in advanced countries has shown a "steep annual increase." In 1967, it 

 said, 100,262 foreign students were enrolled in American institutions of higher 

 learning; an estimated 70 percent were from the LDCs. According to estimates by 

 Prof. Robert Myers of the University of Chicago, described by Dr. John C. 

 Shearer, Director, Manpower Research and Training Center at Oklahoma State 

 University, as the "best overall measures of the foreign student brain drain," the 

 overall nonreturn rate is between 15 and 25 percent rather than the semiofficial 8 

 to 10 percent frequently quoted. Leakage among nonreturning doctoral students 

 has ranged from a high of 90 percent for Taiwan to a low of 14 percent 

 for Pakistan. 2" 



Another aspect of the shift in immigration criteria was competition 

 among the developed countries for professional and skilled manpower. 

 This competition was especially keen in the medical, engineering, and 

 scientific professions. As Canada's Minister of Manpower and Im- 

 migration put it: "The high cost of training professional and skilled 

 people ... is a measure of the benefit derived [by] Canada. . . . 

 Other countries are in competition with us for immigrants." ^^^ 



Still another effect of the change in criteria has been to make skilled 

 manpower more mobile and unskilled manpower less so. 



In the international debates of the mid-1960s, the United States and 

 its economic policies and practices were singled out as a main cause of 

 brain drain from the developing countries. However, the author com- 

 ments, later studies revealed new evidence suggesting what Ambas- 

 sador Nun Eren of Turkey has called "universal culpability" — 



All the great industrial powers of the West were shown to have been acting as 

 centers of attraction for scientists, engineers, [and] doctors . . . not only the 

 United States but Great Britain, France, Germany, Canada, and Australia. In 

 varying degrees these countries were the principal gainers in the brain drain, 

 while such LDCs as India, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Philippine Islands, Taiwan, 

 Korea, Colombia, and Argentina were prominent losers. Thus the LDCs paid 

 part of the price for manpower benefits accrued to the expanding industrial 

 societies of the world.^^* 



U.S. Involvement 



More than any other country, the United States is a magnet foi 

 migrating scientists, engineers, physicians, and other professionals. 

 Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski of Columbia University, a student of brain 

 drain and of the impact of technology on human affairs, has observed 

 that "America's professional attraction for the global scientific elite 

 is without historic precedent in, either scale or scope." ^^^ 



23« Ibid., p. 1081. 

 23' Ibid. 



238 Ibid., p. 1082. 



239 Ibid., p. 1083. 



i*" Ibid., p. 1095. (In January 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski was appointed by President Carter to the position 

 of Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.) 



