Global Flow of Human Resources

When we think of a global brain drain, we typically think of third world countries in Africa, and emerging nations in Asia and South America. Despite some recent boom years, even Russia and China are losing significant numbers of their best and most ambitious scientists, engineers, and professionals.

Global Migration Patterns 2005

More than 150,000 mainlanders [Chinese] obtained overseas citizenship last year, meaning they have made a new home, or an alternative one. The report says the rich and educated elites are becoming the main force in the latest round of emigration, and that many had left in search of a more democratic society, a cleaner environment and better educational opportunities. The main beneficiaries were the US (87,000), Canada and Australia (30,000 each) and New Zealand (6,000).

Li Xiaogang, a research director of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, says the elite are leaving because China's social and political development has not kept up with the economic environment in which they achieved their success. _Chinese Emigration

Even plucky Israel, with a loyal and vibrant, hardworking and intelligent population, loses educated and skilled people to lands with perceived greater opportunity.

Most Israelis who are headed abroad in search of economic opportunities or furthering their professional careers have their sights set on the United States, although the ultimate destination is largely a function of educational achievements. Emigrants from Israel to the United States tend to be more educated or professionally qualified than those choosing other destinations,...

...Among emigrant families where both spouses were born in Israel, 64% went to the United States, 18% to central or western Europe, 3% to eastern Europe and 15% to other destinations.

...Of the emigrants with undergraduate degrees, 60% went to the United States and 20% to Europe, while for those with a master's degree these figures were 62% and 19%, respectively. Among the Israeli emigrants with a medical degree, 72% chose the United States and 7.6% headed to Europe. For those with a Ph.D., these numbers were nearly 80% and 13%, respectively. _Haaretz

Even highly skilled and educated professionals and scientists from the UK and Europe are leaving for better opportunities in Canada, the US, Australia, and Switzerland. (PDF)

Of course, under US President Obama, US economic prospects continue to be tenuous -- with large numbers of business leaders complaining about the Obama administration's anti-private sector bias, and a high level of uncertainty as to crucial future economic policies in the US. Such dissatisfaction with the economically incompetent US president has kept US employment levels and new business startups suppressed far beyond what would have occurred in a normal recovery.

The prolonged Obama recession has led to what many in the media have labeled a "reverse brain drain" back to countries of origin for many educated emigrants and persons on educational visas. But in the larger scheme of things, such a "reverse brain drain" constitutes more of an eddy current than a genuinely significant counter-current -- at least so far.

Give Obama enough time to wreck the US economy, and such a reverse brain drain may well develop in earnest. That would require rational economic policies to be instituted in other countries, of course, which is not typically seen these days.

Wealthy Mexicans Flee to US to Escape Crime & Kidnappers

It is not safe to live in Mexico, if you have something that someone else wants. In 2011, there were six kidnappings per day in Mexico. The Mexican drug war is an ongoing national tragedy, with over 12,000 dead last year. Mass executions occur regularly. Sometimes the bodies are found, but often people simply disappear.

It is difficult to blame those who have the means to escape, for doing so.

...powerful drug cartels, assisted by corrupt government officials, have generated mayhem, in many cases pushing the elite out. These migrants call themselves the faces of the country’s collateral damage, tracing their arrival to extortions, kidnappings and killings that have pushed Mexico into a wave of insecurity since 2006 or before.

This month, the nongovernmental National Citizens Observatory group released figures showing that crime-related deaths had increased 84 percent since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderón sent the military and federal police forces to attack organized crime, beginning with his home state of Michoacán. Overall, an estimated 60,000 people have been killed since then...

...The newspaper Milenio, using declassified documents obtained through Mexico’s freedom-of-information law, estimated that more than 24,000 people have gone missing since 2006... overall homicides and extortions continue to increase this year, according to the report and its director, Ricardo Sepulveda.

“The truth is we haven’t seen a reduction in crimes in general, and those are the ones that most affect the security of the country,” he said. _DallasNews

The US government allows foreign nationals to buy permanent US residency status, through something called an EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa. By investing at least $500,000__ in a new business venture in the US, a foreign national can qualify for permanent US residency.

The result is an exodus, with echoes of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, which pushed tens of thousands of Mexicans to settle throughout the southwestern U.S. The new arrivals are investing in places such as San Diego, El Paso, San Antonio and, increasingly, Dallas, creating jobs throughout North Texas...

...Some of the new arrivals make lifelong decisions on the spot. A tire executive from San Luis Potosí, who had been followed by shady men for days, stepped on the gas one afternoon and didn’t stop until he crossed into Texas. He now lives in Dallas. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he continues to cross the border, attending to business and keeping a low profile.

... Leticia Sañudo sits outside her establishment — La Paloma Taquería — next to the Neiman Marcus department store at NorthPark Center and marvels at her good fortune. She left behind a life of privilege in Mexico City, traded everything she knew to come to Dallas with her three boys. And things couldn’t be better....

...Sañudo isn’t sure she’ll ever return to Mexico. In 2005, she feared being kidnapped and saw no future for her boys. Through a friend she met Ramírez and offered to invest in some of his eight taco restaurants. She took her savings and bought into Ramírez’s La Paloma Taquería. She is helping create jobs and introducing authentic tacos to Dallas’ upper echelons who shop next door. _DallasNews

More:

Top 10 Kidnapping Countries

1. Afghanistan
2. Somalia
3. Iraq
4. Nigeria
5. Pakistan
6. Yemen
7. Venezuela
8. Mexico
9. Haiti
10. Colombia

Note in the article linked above that Mexican kidnappings are officially understated, and that Mexico could easily rank at the top of the list instead of #8.

The numbers for all of the third world countries above are likely to be understated, given the turbulent nature of the societies, the rampant corruption and incompetence in security forces, and the general "cheapness" of human life across the regions involved.

Irony Alert! Pravda Touts UK "Brain Drain Disaster"

While Russia itself is in the midst of its own decades-long brain drain, the Russian media outlet Pravda is shining the spotlight thousands of kilometres from Moscow on the United Kingdom. According to Pravda, the UK is facing a serious disaster:

The UK government is seriously concerned. According to statistics, every three minutes a citizen leaves the country. If this trend continues, the state will soon be on the brink of a disaster whose consequences would be nearly impossible to eliminate. According to the analysts at the University of Huddersfield, the reduction in the number of scientists willing to emigrate can only be achieved by an increase in the level of wages, as well as allocating additional funding for research activities.

according to the analysts at the University of Huddersfield, the country is suffering not only from the loss of skilled workers, but also the "brain drain." Every year in the UK each university loses two to three high-level scientists.

Emigration rates are striking. The Telegraph, citing the National Bureau of Statistics, reported that only this year over 400,000 British citizens left the country, which has not happened in the last 50 years.

According to analysts of the British Institute of Social Policy Studies, one in twelve citizens lives abroad, and over a million are seriously considering leaving the United Kingdom in the next two to three years. The Institute analysts argue that those leaving the country are mostly middle-aged professionals who want to find a better place to work. The young British stay in the country. _Pravda

The Pravda piece appears to conflate the idea of a "brain drain" with the very real phenomenon of Britons retiring to nicer climates, or moving abroad to work in lucrative fields.

According to the piece, UK universities lose 2 to 3 high level scientists per year, a very small portion of the 400,000 emigrants. And certainly Russia itself has been losing its top scientists and technologists at a much higher rate for 20 years and counting. But for some reason, Pravda finds Britain's "brain drain" troubling and disastrous.

In Russia, it is the lack of opportunity caused by rampant corruption and massive dysfunction that drives its best and brightest young people out. No one trusts Russia's markets or its government.

One interesting aspect of the UK emigration puzzle -- which is shared by Israel -- is that the UK is often a "stopover destination" for immigrants from poorer nations. These "stopover immigrants" often acquire more education and training in their intermediate destinations, then move on to Switzerland, the US, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand.

Complicating the global picture is the fact that the US Obama government -- and other dysfunctional western governments -- are so badly mis-managing their economies and minimising opportunities, that they are driving many highly skilled immigrants either back to their home countries, or to yet another, third country.

So raise a glass of chilled vodka to the stalwart journalists of Pravda, who understand what must be done to keep their jobs and their Moscow residences. Media skanks tend to all smell the same, no matter where they live and work.

No Children: The Legacy of Obamanomics

The recession [is having] a disproportionate impact on people of child-bearing age, who suffered higher unemployment and steeper income declines than their elders. In the process, the U.S. fertility rate dropped from over 2.1 births per woman in 2007 to 1.9 last year, below replacement rate for the first time since the mid-1980s. The 2010 Census found that the number of households that have children under age 18 was 38 million, unchanged from 2000, despite a 9.7% growth in the U.S. population over that period.

Of course many environmentalists would celebrate these numbers, and some nativists as well. But the problem is not that we need more people per se — we need an increase in younger, working-age people to make up for our soon to be soaring population of retirees. Young people are the raw capital of the information age and innovation, and new families are its ballast and growth market. _Joel Kotkin

Billions of people once looked at the US as the land of opportunity. America displayed a relentless spirit of optimism, innovation, and productiveness which many people found appealing, worldwide. As long as America's people were free to pursue dreams and opportunities in the private sector, the possibilities seemed boundless.

By attacking the private sector, Obama is destroying the hope and opportunity not only of millions of young Americans, but of hundreds of millions who live overseas and once viewed America as an example of what their countries might become.

...many developed countries are facing dramatic labor force deficits. By 2050, according to Census projections, there will be 40% fewer workers in Japan then there were in 2000, 25% less in Europe and 10% fewer in China; only projections of higher birthrates and immigration allowed demographers to suggest the U.S. workforce would keep growing.

Without these future workers our already tottering pension system will become even more untenable, as is occurring in Europe and Japan. The bad part about slow population growth is that it depresses the economy, which in turn works against family formation. _Joel Kotkin

It is not just about the quantity of young workers, of course. It is also about the quality of future workers. If American children are being dumbed down and neotenised by dysfunctional systems of education and child-raising, they will only contribute but a fraction of what they would have been capable of contributing otherwise. And if the shrinking numbers of young Americans are replaced by third world immigrants with lower aptitude to maintain and improve a high technology infrastructure, the entire society will have taken giant steps backward.

Everything rests upon the senses of optimism and opportunity, which under Obama are being submerged under a great malaise. So long as a society chooses to be sabotaged by corrupt and dysfunctional leaders, it has only itself to blame for the consequences.

The Third World? It's Murder Out There!

The above map gives a rough idea of where the global hot spots of murder occur. Across Latin America, the Caribbean, SubSaharan Africa, and other third world areas. A finer level of detail, seen in the tables below, reveals the third world hot spots of crime seen first in regions, then in particular countries. If we chose to look even closer, we would see concentrations of third world crime within the inner cities and banlieus of Europe, North America, and Oceania.

The tables below are taken from Wikipedia "List of countries by intentional homicide rate"

Intentional homicide rates per 100,000 population by region	2004[5]	2010[6]
Southern Africa	37.3	32
Central America	29.3	25
South America	25.9	21
West and Central Africa	21.6	19
East Africa	20.8	23
Africa	20	17.4
Caribbean	18.1	21
Americas	16.2	15.5
East Europe	15.7	7
North Africa	7.6	6
World	7.6	6.9
North America	6.5	4.7
Central Asia and Transcaucasian countries	6.6	6
Europe	5.4	3.5
Near and Middle East/Southwest Asia	4.4	3
Oceania	4	3.5
South Asia	3.4	4
Asia	3.2	3.1
Southeast Europe	3.2	1.5
East and Southeast Asia	2.8	3
West and Central Europe	1.5	1.2

Country	Sources	2010
Honduras	[7][8]	78
El Salvador	[7][8]	66
Jamaica	[7]	52
Venezuela	[9]	48
Belize	[7][8][10]	42
Guatemala	[7][8]	41
Colombia	[11]	38
Saint Kitts and Nevis	[7]	38
Trinidad and Tobago	[12]	37
South Africa	[13]	32
Bahamas	[7]	28
Brazil	[14]	25
Dominican Republic	[7]	25
Saint Lucia	[7]	25
Dominica	[7]	22
Panama	[7][8]	22
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	[7]	22
Ecuador	[7]	18
Guyana	[7]	18
Mexico	[15]	18
Russia	[16]	13
Nicaragua	[7][8]	13
Grenada	[7]	12
Paraguay	[7]	12
Barbados	[7]	11
Costa Rica	[7][8]	11
Bolivia	[7]	8.9
Moldova	[7]	7.4
Haiti	[7]	6.9
Antigua and Barbuda	[7]	6.8
Estonia	[17]	6.3
Uruguay	[7]	6.1
Thailand	[7]	5.3
United States	[18]	4.8
Georgia	[7]	4.1
Latvia	[19]	3.6
Taiwan	[20]	3.2
Bangladesh	[21]	2.4
Lebanon	[7]	2.2
Israel	[7][22]	2.1
Macedonia	[7]	1.94
New Zealand	[23]	1.76
Czech Republic	[24]	1.67
Canada	[25]	1.62
Morocco	[7]	1.40
Chile	[26]	1.33
Ireland	[27]	1.25
Netherlands	[28]	0.87
Denmark	[29]	0.85
Germany	[30]	0.84
Japan (including attempts)	[31]	0.83
Austria	[32]	0.56

Intentional homicide tends to drop off in areas of greater development, and where populations are most homogeneous and the least multicultural. As Europe, Canada, and Oceania become more multicultural -- closer to the United States -- the crime rates for those areas are likely to approach the crime rates in the US. If countries such as Finland are able to resist immigration from the third world, they should be able to keep their crime rates among the lowest in the world.

Honduras is on the path to having the highest murder rates in the world.

Jamaica is a perennial crime capital of the Caribbean -- which is saying quite a lot.

Latin America is often dangerous, but if you look you should find some safe havens.

Part of the problem involves race. As we have noted before, in the US, African American males are the worst violent offenders. Take away African American crime from the US, and the country compares well with the best of Europe on that score.

Areas of the world with large populations of African descent will typically have high rates of violent crime. Low IQ and low impulse control appear to be the most likely heritable traits contributing to high violent crime among Africans and among persons of African descent. The violent gangsta rap culture also contributes an "expectation of violence" and early death among its many adherents in the ghetto and among wannabes elsewhere.

US Hispanics likewise exhibit higher rates of violent crime than both European and Asian Americans, although Hispanic crime rates are not nearly as high as African American crime rates. That being the case, one must wonder why Latin American crime rates rival the worst of African rates.

Part of the problem is the violently competitive drug trade in Latin America. Another part of the problem is the conflation caused by African-descended populations living in Latin American cities contributing to high crime rates there. In addition, given the extreme high rates of crime within some indigenous tribes in Latin America, one must allow for the possibility that some behavioural traits contributing to criminal behaviour are inherited within the mestizo communities. Original settlers and conquerors from Spain and Portugal were not necessarily the most peace-loving members of their societies. They have no doubt passed along some of their propensity to violence to their descendants. Finally, the latino culture is a machismo culture, which can contribute to postures of ready violence among men, often egged on by women.

Given these possible reasons for high crime in Africa and Latin America, it should be clear that the politically correct agenda of modern leftists will be of absolutely no help at all in lowering third world crime rates.

So what do we do? First of all, immigration from the third world into the advanced world should be severely curtailed immediately. Second, black markets within the advanced world which contribute to third world crime should be crippled, using market means and deregulation as much as possible rather than law enforcement. Third, every effort should be made to aid the deportation of third world career criminals who have taken up residence within advanced nations.

More on this topic later.

Previously published on abu al-fin