Impact Abroad

By Pico Iyer

Immigration is frequently an uneven transaction. When a scientist from India or a professor from Guatemala or a physician from the Philippines moves to the U.S., America's gain is the native land's loss. Since few American professionals head out to settle elsewhere in the world, the redistribution of talent serves only to widen the gap between the land of plenty and the lands of poverty. Worse still, the cycle tends to perpetuate itself: as more people leave their native country for the U.S., more are likely to leave, to join relatives or cash in on connections or simply follow examples.

Though nothing new, the brain drain has recently seemed more than ever to be taking from the poor and giving to the rich: whereas 30 years ago most well- qualified newcomers to the U.S. arrived from Europe, now they stream in from the poorer countries of the Third World. "It is indeed paradoxical," says Dr. D.N. Misra, adviser to India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, "that the underdeveloped countries, which have the greatest need for scientists, engineers, managers and other professionals, are in fact losing many of their best-educated young men to the developed countries." Even among unskilled workers, the U.S. tends to attract the most enterprising -- those who are adventurous enough to quit their homes and strike out for new opportunities in America.

The first to leave are outstanding students who win admission to U.S. universities and who, not surprisingly, accept challenging jobs and high salaries in America upon their graduation. Each year, for instance, some 6,000 Taiwan Chinese arrive to study in the U.S.; no more than 20% ever return home. Many of the top achievers at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur are snapped up by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. "These students are dedicated individuals of discipline, diligence and dignity," says Robert Ringler, an associate dean of the University of California, Los Angeles, who is an adviser to Asian students. "They are a treasure to any country, and it is a shame that their homes sometimes don't have the resources to nurture and hold on to them."

No less costly to Third World nations is the steady migration of well- trained professionals in search of a life, any life, in America. The wage differential between the U.S. and Mexico, for example, is 15 to 1. For many others, even poverty in the U.S. is preferable to an uneasy prosperity at home: thus lawyers and doctors from Central America may be found washing cars or working as bellhops in Miami. Other highly skilled people are driven to emigrate not by economic choice but by political circumstance. During their genocidal 45-month reign in Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge killed roughly 2 million people, many of them white-collar workers. As a result, around 70% of the Kampucheans in the U.S. are professionals.

Whatever the cause, the cost for countries that lose minds and hearts to the U.S. can be high. The presence of 8,000 Israeli engineers in the U.S. has, according to Yosef Kucik, emigration adviser to the Israeli government, "created a severe bottleneck in the development of sophisticated industry in Israel." Around half of the 1,000 students who graduate each year from the 27 medical schools in the Philippines go abroad, leaving one doctor tending to as many as 20,000 people in some of the archipelago's rural areas.

Inevitably, many countries have mounted efforts to counter the outflowing tide. An Israeli professional in the U.S. who considers going home, for example, receives a banquet of blandishments. The local consulate sends his or her resume to at least three prospective employers in Israel and helps the applicant finance a trip back home for job interviews. If the candidate accepts a position, the Israeli government makes available a host of benefits, including a handsome mortgage on a new house, loans to cover moving costs and a waiver of customs duties on everything except a car.

Other nations, by contrast, actually encourage emigration. Mexico's population is growing so fast that the country would have to create at least 750,000 jobs a year just to keep its unemployment rate from mounting further. Small wonder, then, that Mexico makes scant effort to assist the U.S. in reversing the tide. President Ferdinand Marcos has cited the annual exodus of 35,000 Filipinos to the U.S. as a help in offsetting two of his country's most obstinate problems: unemployment (now running at 45%) and a lopsided balance of payments. In South Korea, the departure of workers has eased some of the strains triggered by a population boom; in overcrowded Hong Kong (pop. 5.5 million), departing workers have reduced competition for professional jobs.

Few countries, however, can afford to take satisfaction from the departure of their best and brightest. In the process, they lose not only the resources of those who leave but also the confidence and commitment of those who remain. That loss is poignantly dramatized in an image common to most Third World capitals: the long line that snakes each weekday around the U.S. embassy. In Mexico, most applicants must wait eight years for a U.S. immigrant visa. In India, 140,000 people are on the waiting list for 20,000 annual U.S. immigrant visas. Most difficult of all, perhaps, is Hong Kong, where nearly 31,000 people have applied for the 600 places available each year. That could mean a wait of more than 50 years. And the line is growing longer.

With reporting by Dean Brelis/New Delhi and Nelly Sindayen/Manila