Roughly a decade ago, I spent a year in a developing country working on a project to promote human rights. We had a rotating team of about a dozen (mostly) brilliant local employees, all college-educated, working alongside us. We invested a lot of time and money into training these employees, with the expectation that they (as members of the college-educated elite) would help lead human rights reform in the country long after our project disbanded. I got nostalgic and looked up my old colleagues recently. Every single one is living in the West now. A few are still somewhat involved in human rights, but most are notably under-employed (a lawyer washing dishes in a restaurant in Virginia, for example).
I'm torn on this. I'm sure my former colleagues are happier on an individual level. Their human rights are certainly better respected in the West, and the salaries are better. But the potential good that they could have done in their home country is (probably) substantially higher. On my way out, I signed letters of recommendation for each employee, which I later found out were used to pad visa applications. (I am perhaps feeling a bit of guilt over contributing to a developing country's "brain drain" as a result.) After I left, there was a blowup between two of the Western employees over whether to continue supporting emigration. The TL;DR of the disagreement was "It's the nice thing to do, and refusing to support emigration could reduce morale and our ability to hire go-getters" versus "We can't have lasting impact if our ringers keep leaving."
I'm curious about what other EAs have seen in their orgs. Is there any kind of organizational policy that exists on matters like this?
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I think this is a huge and under-recognised problem with migration - that the very best people who could have made the biggest difference transforming their country end up leaving, mostly doing far less transformative and "cruxy" work in western countries. I live in Uganda and have seen the same phenomenon.
The strongest pro-immigration argument is usually that we should support migration because remittances are so important and the good done by that can overcome the harms of "brain drain". If the very best people leave though, I think the negative effect can be enormous.
Also see my comment here on this article by Lauren, along very similar lines.
"The best people leave, people that could be innovating, inspiring, leading and starting the best businesses that could grow the country. When you skim off the top 1%, you can "replace" them by training others, but you can't replace their natural brilliant traits that could have led them to transform their countries."
https://www.laurenpolicy.com/p/why-brain-drain-isnt-something-we
This issue was also discussed a little in the comments about my wee piece here.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9TnGxtSjjdpeufaqs/is-nigerian-nurse-emigration-really-a-win-win-critique-of-a
It's a very thoughtful set of questions!
Firstly, I think you would be interested to know about Malengo which is a charity which is helping people in impoverished provinces in Uganda to enrol in German Universities and eventually settle there. They often seek out volunteers to mentor these propsective students, it's very rewarding.
Re brain-drain I have 4 thoughts.
TLDR they are
1) Lots of talent doesn't flourish in their home countries
2) Advocating for specific visa-pathways can give much more win-win opportunities for all involved
3) Many people go back to home countries when they have the choice/credible opportunity to do so
4) Moral argument, my strong passport is awesome, I have a right to have options as to where I live, others deserve it too
Long version:
1) Is it really a brain drain if talent would be counterfactually lost? For every ambitious underemployed dishwasher in the US theres likely many more people who were born in the wrong place, time and/or body/sexuality/religious family to ever have a fair opportunity to grow and make an impact. Often it's simply 'brain allocation' and the remittances sent home can have a greater impact than if the immigrant would have not found a good role in the home country.
2) Advocating for policies of specialised visa pathways can largely by win-win without brain draining effects. Let's say hyopthetical rich country has a shortage of nurses and a developing country has a over-supply in nursing graduates (rare scenario ik) / can really up the amount of trained nurses in a few years. A specialised visa-pathways can heavily benefit both countries.
3) Often people will come back when given the chance. About half if not most of Polish nationals in the UK have left the country after 2018, largely back to Poland despite the UK still having a much larger GDP per capita. The UN predicts 1 million Syrians will return in the first ~7 months after the end of the civil war, in 14 years 6.7 million left the country, that's quite a significant fraction for such a short amout of time. Many people want to be at their original home country in the long-term (Of course the UN prediction may be wrong). The perceived opportunities/ trajectories within countries as well as the cultural ties make people to come back.
4) There's a moral argument here. My entire life was determined by my parent's freedom to move freely with European Union borders. Many of there peers did not make the same choice and stayed in Poland. It's excellent that they had the right to make that choice. I believe people in developing states also should have that right, and its the responsibilities of Governments to give them reasons to stay.
Folks, I appreciate that this is an issue a lot of people are emotionally invested in. And I want to thank @NickLaing and @Tym for their substantive and carefully considered comments.
I do want to reiterate the question I asked at the end--Has anyone encountered formal policies (perhaps in HR?) about matters like this?
I think it seems pretty evil & infantilizing to force people to stay in their home country because you think they’ll do more good there. The most you should do is argue they’ll do more good in their home country than a western country, then leave it up to them to decide.
I will furthermore claim that if you find yourself disagreeing, you should live in the lowest quality of living country you can find, since clearly that is the best place to work in your own view.
Maybe I have more faith in the market here than you do, but I do think that technical & scientific & economic advancement do in fact have a tendency to not only make everywhere better, but permanently so. Even if the spread is slower than we’d like. By forcing the very capable to stay in their home country we ultimately deprive the world and the future from the great additions they may make given much better & healthier working conditions.
This is not a discussion about anyone forcing anyone to do anything (noone has suggested that), but the original question was about the degree we should potentially fund and support the best workers in our orgs to emigrate. This is a hugely important question, because from experience in Uganda with enough time and resources I could probably help almost any high level qualified and capable person to emigrate but is that really the best thing for me do?
As things stand every country in the world has huge restrictions on emigration, which does often "force" people to stay where they were born, something no one in this discussion thread has the power to do.
The most talented people from low income countries are often much better placed to improve up their own country than we are from richer countries, due to cultural knowledge and connections. In saying that I do agree that far more people from high income countries could be doing a lot of good living and working in low income countries.
This question was also discussed in this other forum post, and probably in some other posts that I can’t find. Why Brain Drain Isn't Something We Should Worry About
I think not adopting policies or helping people to immigrate would be a very tough sell, given (my impression, at least) of the overwhelmingly strong evidence of immigration on quality of life and economic growth - I was under the impression that the evidence was pretty strong on the "brain drain=good" side, though I could be wrong. An important part of being EA is being evidence based, and I'd need to see evidence that brain drain is actually bad on net.
This also seems very morally problematic - "US passport for me but not for thee" doesn't seem like something I would be comfortable supporting ethically without very strong evidence otherwise. Forcing someone to work and live somewhere against their will seems really bad. I wouldn't want to be plucked up, moved to a developing country, be forced to work, and told I couldn't leave, and I'd encourage people to not do that to others as well.