1282 



had never been a great national issue— not- even a national issue- 

 perhaps because the United States gained and other countries suffered 

 the losses. But a more decisive reason is that the issue itself is set in 

 the context of a paradox : the Nation is committed to the principle of 

 liberalized immigration policies and to the principle of international 

 education exchange; both would conflict with any administrative 

 policies that could be designed to reverse the flow of emigrating pro-, 



fessionals. . ,-, t i j -4. ' 



The Nation maintains a commitment to liberalized and more equita- 

 ble immigration laws. This commitment was spelled out in the revised 

 immigration law of 1965 which eliminated the discriminatory national 

 origins quota system and which has since been refined through lib- 

 eralizing immigration regulations. However, the United States does 

 exercise its right to establish priorities for admission, for example, 

 of scarce professionals, and to limit immigration, but without resort- 

 ing to discriminatorv devices based on nationality. For example, ian 

 annual ceiling of 120^000 was placed on immigration from the Western 

 Hemisphere with no preference system or previous- country limit. 



The Nation also maintains a com.mitment to the principle of inter- 

 national educational exchange."* This commitment, which is rooted 

 in the Nation's history, was given new life in the Fulbright Amend- 

 ments to the Surplus 'Property Act of 1944; it was expanded in the 

 U.S. Information and Education Exchange Act of 1948 ; and it was 

 subsequently refined by administrative regulations and such laws_ as 

 the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961, which 

 were intended to accommodate the exchange and inflow of students 

 and visiting scholars. With the adverse effects of brain drain in mind, 

 amendments were made to legislation on educational exchange pro- 

 grams to encourage the return of students and scholars. 



National commitments in immigration and education exchange and 

 the laws and regulations they generated work at cross-purposes with 

 efforts to correct, much less reverse, brain drain, for they stimulate the 

 inflow of professionals by providing convenient legal and administra- 

 tive mechanisms that encourage exchange and accommodate profes- 

 sionals seeking entry. Gregory Henderson summed up the para- 

 dox in these words : 



This change [revising the immigration quota system] sounds most reasonable. 

 Yet it will greatly increase the already painful draining away to ourselves of 

 the very skills needed by the emerging nations in order to better themselves. For 

 prominent among the nations whose quotas have until now been insufficient are 

 those very lesser developed nations we have sought to aid. Addedly painful 

 has been the fact that this drainage has, up to the present, been serious but has 

 been effected under the . . . [beneficent] name of "international exchange." "° 



•734 por a study of the overseas activities of nongovernmental American scientists and 

 technical porsorinal In majf)r programs of the Federal Government, see U.S. Concress, 

 House Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. f^cientista Abroad; An Examination of Major 

 Programs for Nongovernmental Scientific Exchange. Prepared for the Subcommittee on 

 National Securltv Policy and Scientific Developments by Genevieve J. Knezo, Analyst in 

 Science and Teehnolocy, Science Policy Research Division, Congressional Research Serv- 

 ice, lyihrary of Cnnsress. (As part of an extended study of the Interactions of science and 

 technology' with United States foreign policy), 1974, 163 pp. (Committee print) 



T" Henderson, "Foreign Students: Exchange or Immigration, p. 348. Stevens and Ver- 

 meulen have written convincingly of the paradox inherent in creating programs "nominally 

 for educational exchange, whose purposes were vague, and which had become a prime ve- 

 hicle for the importation of physicians to the United States." (See Stevens and Vermeulen, 

 op. elt., p. 64, and Chapter 3 for a discussion of International exchange and immigration.) 



