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 already 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 brain drain? Emigration has been blamed for emptying African clinics of nurses, who can earn far more in London hospitals. In careful statistical study, CGD senior fellow Michael Clemens has found little 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 gives credit for migration of skilled and especially unskilled people using data on the gross inflow of migrants from developing countries. The CDI also uses indicators of openness to students from poor countries and aid for refugees and asylum seekers.
Norway takes first place for accepting the most migrants for its size and bearing the second largest share of refugee burden (Sweden contributing the most). New Zealand and Australia also score well for accepting migrants and foreign students but lose points for low sharing 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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