1145 



CX)MPULSION TO EMIGRATE 



By nature, traditional societies in the LDCs work at cross-purposes 

 with the spirit of the scientific-technological age and accordingly cre- 

 ate conditions that generate brain drain. Institutions, like society it- 

 self, rigidly structured and closed to innovation, become both the per- 

 petuator and protector of socially archaic, outmoded values. 



Political power tends to remain with the keepers of the status quo, 

 unshared with the innovators, thus raising the threshold of change 

 and modernization. Processes of societal and intellectual calcification 

 prevent upward mobility of the young and ambitious, frustrate intel- 

 lectual growth, depress the spirit of scientism, reduce the horizons of 

 action and expectation among the scientific-technological intelligentsia, 

 and impose a negative attitude toward the role of science and the 

 science-oriented man in modern society. Demoralized and uncertain 

 about his future and that of his country and pushed by forces of so- 

 cial obscurantism into a choice, the intellectual finds escape in immi- 

 gration to the advanced technological societies of the West.^®^ 



Political Factors Causing Brain Brain: Intellectual Repression 



Oppression, instability and unrest, governmental indifference to 

 scientific development, and erosion of loyalties among nationals are 

 political elements that push professional manpower into migration. 

 Science and technology can flourish within totalitarian systems, but 

 seem most ideally to flourish in a free environment unhindered and 

 unimpeded where freedom of thought and inquii-y, so necessary to the 

 pursuit of the scientific method, are given full reign. Failure to achieve 

 this ideal often pushes scientists and other professionals into migra- 

 tion. Others suffering direct political persecution seek the same way 

 out, for political tyranny and politically inspired anti-intellectualism 

 can destroy the scientific spirit. 



Classic cases of men who suffered for their beliefs and emigrated, are 

 those of Einstein, Enrico Fermi, and numerous other scientists, includ- 

 ing Nobel laureates Born, Debye, Chain, Krebs, Lipmann, Loevi, von 

 Hess, Perutz, and Schroedinger, who fled Germany and Austria dur- 

 ing the Nazi period.^®^ Less prominent are the thousands of profes- 

 sionals who fled Cuba and other Communist dominanted lands in the 

 postwar period. During 1960-61 alone, 1,360 doctors immigrated to 

 the United States from Castro's Cuba. This figure comprised one- 

 fourth of Cuba's medical manpower and represented an output of 3 

 years of its faculty of medicine. Two months after the Soviet bloc in- 

 vasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, some 1,500 refugees had 

 been processed by the U.S. Consulate in Vienna for immigration to the 

 United States. Many of these refugees were professionals.^®* 



During January to June 1973, 115 doctors fled Communist East 

 Germany to West Germany in search of freedom and higher incomes, 

 much to the displeasure of the Honecker regime, which needed the 

 manpower and deplored the loss of a substantial investment.^®^ From 



^^ Some scientists and engineers In advanced countries are also Influenced by this psy- 

 chological mood of uncertainty about the future of their country and thus choose to emi- 

 grate. This attitude was expressed In the following statement by the British Council of 

 Engineering Institutions which, taken with the lower prestige factor of scientists and 

 engineers In British society, acts as a precondition for emigration : "The lack of faith 

 on the part of its young men In the future of the United Kingdom as a technological 

 power Is a serious threat to the country's future." (Quoted In, Sllj, op. clt, p. 9.) 



** Adams and Dlrlam, op. clt., p. 259. 



»* Adams, "Talent That Won't Stay Put," p. 73. 



»6 The Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 11, 1973, p. 8. 



