1285 



Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, 

 and International Law, is correct, namely, that the attitude toward 

 immigration is one of apathy, then it seems that official concern for 

 brain drain has reached its nadir.'" Certainly the comments by Secre- 

 tary Weinberger noted in the preceding chapters reveal a certain 

 insensitivity to the brain drain issue in' the administration. 



An indicator of current State Department interest in the brain drain 

 problem is the address by Alan A. Reich, Deputy Assistant Secretary 

 for Educational and Cultural Affairs, to the 70th Annual Convention 

 on Medical Education of the AMA in Chicago on February 1, 1974. 

 In the address, entitled, ''International Understanding and Foreign 

 Medical Graduates," Mr. Keich discussed the problem of FMGs within 

 the larger context of what the State Department calls "meaningful 

 people-to-people interchange," that is, international exchange and com- 

 munications as an instrument of American diplomacy. Mr. Reich cited 

 three major problems relating to FMGs and the possible impact on 

 international understanding: (1) The "so-called 'brain drain' or loss 

 of much-needed medical manpower in other countries to the United 

 States"; (2) the failure of exchange visitor physicians to return home 

 after training in this country; and (3) "our failure to provide many 

 foreign medical graduates in the United States with proper orienta- 

 tion, exposure to the American way of life, and meaningful cross- 

 cultural experiences with Americans." 



Loss of medical manpower, Reich declared, stemmed from the fail- 

 ure of many countries of origin to provide adequate incentives to re- 

 tain their doctors or to have them return home after training abroad. 

 As for the United States, he said, "We do not seek to entice medical 

 manpower from other countries or to deprive them of this much- 

 needed human resource." Justification for admission of FMGs to the 

 United States as immigrants is based on the principle of freedom of 

 movement and the failure of the donor countries to control the outflow 

 or rectify the conditions that create it. As Mr. Reich said : ". . . with 

 the receiving country not opposing the entry of doctors and their own 

 countries not providing adequate encouragement for them to practice 

 at home, it is difficult to reduce the number of foreign physicians tak- 

 ing up attractive positions in the United States and other developed 

 nations." This problem, Reich stated, "creates embarrassment" for the 

 U.S. Government, and he acknowledged that this Government was 

 "cooperating with other concerned governments in an attempt to alle- 

 viate the problem." 



In discussing problems arising from the exchange visitor programs, 

 Mr. Reich emphasized that this program was not designed to fill 

 staffing needs of U.S. institutions, nor was it intended to be used "as a 

 springboard for immigration to the United States." Rather it was 

 designed to improve and strengthen U.S. diplomacy by promoting 

 better mutual understanding and two-way communication between 

 Americans and other peoples of the world. Reich implied that the 

 purposes of the program had been misused. The "fallout" rate for 

 M.D.s from the exchange visitor program, he noted, over the 4-year 



'" Eilberg, "New Goals of U.S. Immigration Policy," p. E7523. 



