About 200 million people around the world—1 in 33—do not live in the country where they were born. Workers who have migrated from poor to rich countries send billions of dollars back to their families each year, a flow that surpasses foreign aid. Some immigrants from developing countries, especially students, acquire new knowledge and skills and bring them home—engineers and physicians as well as entrepreneurs who, for example, start computer businesses. But what about the “brain drain”? Emigration has been blamed for emptying African clinics of nurses, who can earn far more in London or New York hospitals. But careful studies find no evidence that these skilled people hurt their home country by leaving it. African clinics and hospitals have bigger problems than a lack of personnel, and personnel shortages themselves result from many forces—such as low pay and poor working conditions—untouched by international migration policies. The CDI rewards countries for accepting migrants from developing countries, for openness to students from poor countries, and for sharing the burden of refugees and asylum seekers.
Sweden takes first place, mainly for bearing the largest share of refugee burden; Norway follows in second place for accepting the most migrants for its size. New Zealand and Australia also score well for accepting migrants and foreign students but lose points for bearing a low share of the refugee burden. Greece and South Korea host the largest shares of foreign students from poor countries. But Greece accepts fewer than 10,000 migrants a year from developing countries, a number equal to only 0.08 percent of its own population. The Visegrád countries rank last, with borders that are relatively closed to unskilled laborers, refugees, and students from developing countries.
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