1294 



drain as a case study in which foreign and domestic policies of the 

 United States sharply conflicted; unless the conflict was understood 

 and resolved by governmental leaders, domestic pressures could "com- 

 pletely undermine and even nullify" our Nation's foreign programs. 

 Dr. Perkins perceived the conflict as being specifically "between the 

 objectives of our foreign assistance programs and the requirements 

 of our expanding economy — between our efforts to train people in the 

 less developed countries and our drain of foreign specialists to fill 

 important jobs here in the United States." Pointing out the positive 

 effects and accomplishments of the Nation's foreign assistance and 

 exchange programs in bringing enlightenment and development to 

 the LDCs, he addressed the disturbing, negative side effects of brain 

 drain : 



It is at just this point, however, that our foreign and domestic policies come 

 into conflict. For one of the gravest problems facing the underdeveloped world is 

 the fact that all too many of its best-trained men and women leave home and 

 never return to the departments of agriculture or the schools or the hospitals. 

 If we accept the fact that those who climb the ladder of change are a minority 

 at best, that the climb was diflBcult, and that the presence of these people deter- 

 mines whether or not a foreign assistance program will succeed, then we must 

 understand that it is far more critical for the less developed world to lose 

 them than it is for the more developed world to gain them. Yet it is just this 

 loss we not only countenance but encourage. While with one hand we give 

 laboratory equipment, train teachers, send our own teachers, build buildings — 

 all on the very simple propositions that the modernization of the underdevel- 

 oped world is in our immediate and demonstrated self-interest and that the 

 critical component of a modernizing society is its modernizing men — with the 

 other hand we take away not only the raw materials but the very people who 

 have been so carefully trained to develop them. 



Dr. Perkins concluded : 



Here is the cruel fact of life : we are in competition with the results of our 

 own assistance policies. While we support the idea of foreign development, our 

 domestic needs may be quietly making hash of our best efforts abroad. In that 

 case, foreign aid might simply be a misnomer for domestic assistance with over- 

 seas implications.^*' 



Gregory Henderson, a research associate at Harvard University, 

 former Foreign Service Officer, and author of authoritative studies on 

 brain drain, predicted in 1966 what has come to pass in the early 

 1970's, namely, that the inflow of professionals from the LDCs would 

 increase as political instability in these areas worsened. Thus, the con- 

 tradiction deepens rather than attenuates as the United States gives 

 aid with one hand and absorbs professional human resources with the 

 other. With the benefit of firsthand knowledge in the field, along with 

 expertise derived from research into the subject, Henderson made this 

 sharp judgment: 



As revolutions and coups overthrow more of Africa's new regimes and those 

 of other countries, more students will wish to remain in the United States. Our 

 intention to help emerging nations will be increasingly compromised. Our Gov- 

 ernments left hand is heedless of its right. We give aid to China, Korea, India, 

 and Iran with the one and take their best-trained men away with the other. 

 Our universities do no better than the Government. Students of development 

 decry. our failures to help emerging nations successfully; their colleagues sign 

 on foreign technical assistants ; the foreign student adviser bewails the non- 

 return of training to the lands it should help. There are few universities, great 



"» Perkins, op. clt., pp. 608, 616, and 618. 



