Europe, UK: Brain Drain in Science, Medicine

Europe and the UK are suffering from a growing stampede of educated professionals, scientists, and technical specialists out of the region.

Record numbers of Britons are leaving - many of them doctors, teachers and engineers - in the biggest exodus for almost 50 years.

Skilled professionals, including doctors, are leaving the UK in record numbers Over a quarter of qualified professionals who have moved abroad had health or education qualifications

There are now 3.247 million British-born people living abroad, of whom more than 1.1 million are highly-skilled university graduates, say the researchers.

More than three quarters of these professionals have settled abroad for more than 10 years, according to the study by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

No other nation is losing so many qualified people, it points out. Britain has now lost more than one in 10 of its most skilled citizens, while overall only Mexico has had more people emigrate.

The figures, based on official records from more than 220 countries, will alarm Gordon Brown as tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money is spent on educating graduates. The cost of training a junior doctor, for example, is £250,000.

The most popular destinations are English-speaking countries such as Australia, America, Canada and New Zealand and holiday areas including France and Spain.

Almost 60 per cent of those leaving take jobs, although hundreds of thousands of retired people live abroad.___Telegraph

Feedback on this issue from Telegraph readers can be found here. Many informed blog comments on the same article can be found here. North Americans may find it difficult to understand why so many Europeans are so eager to leave. Particularly leftist North Americans, who so badly want to reproduce Western Europe within the borders of North America.

Unfortunately, there are many good reasons for Europeans and Britons to leave their home countries, as the comments linked to above will demonstrate. I see two overwhelming themes dominating the reasons behind this brain drain.

• 1. Out of control immigration into Europe by uneducated, undisciplined, intolerant newcomers, leading to higher violent crime and property crime rates.
• 2. Excessive taxation and regulation of the productive classes to benefit the non-productive, quasi-parasitic classes (including many of the new immigrants).

The trend will only accelerate with time and continued immigration of violent and religiously intolerant, unassimilable newcomers. When you lose residents at the high end of education and income, and gain residents at the lowest end of education and income--in fact gaining criminals and welfare dependents--then the long-term prospects look grim. It is no wonder that European women are reproducing at only half the replacement levels.Bonus image from Noodle Food demonstrates the flow of emigrant MDs between the four countries: the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia. It is important to realise that although the flow of MDs goes both ways between each pair of countries, there is a distinct lopsidedness there. The desirability rankings, based upon the emigration:immigration ratio, go like this:

1. US
2. Canada
3. Australia
4. UK

The MDs are mostly leaving the UK, and eventually mostly ending up in the US. It would be helpful to have similar information regarding other medical professionals, scientists, teachers, engineers, IT professionals, etc. who are emigrating from the UK and Europe.