Foreign Policy online addresses the "brain drain" vs "brain gain" changes in immigration but also why newer immigrants perhaps do not assimilate as previous generations did into their host environment. - Karen The New Diaspora: New links between emigres and their home countries can become a powerful force for economic development. By Moises Naim @ http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2002/missing_links.html Lucio Garcia, a gardener in Merrifield, Virginia, speaks daily to his family in a remote town in Bolivia using a prepaid phone card that costs him a few cents a minute. Eddie Baron Levi, a Mexican Congressman, commutes weekly from Mexico City to Los Angeles, where he and his constituents reside. Iqbal Farouqi, a Pakistani waiter working in Milan, has used the money he earns to purchase two small trucks in Karachi that he rents to relatives and manages through the Internet. This is not your parents' diaspora. Globalization has greatly expanded the means through which people in one country can remain actively involved in another country's cultural, economic, and political life. In fact, money transfers, travel and communications, networks and associations of nationals living abroad, and other new or improved opportunities for expatriates to "live" in one country even as they reside in another may be creating a powerful tool for development. Moreover, the deregulation of international financial markets coupled with new technologies has made sending money back home easier and cheaper than ever. Last year, people residing abroad sent home more than $100 billion. For many families, the money sent by family members overseas spells the difference between relative poverty and total indigence. That goes for many countries, too. Worker remittances account for 24 percent of Nicaragua's gross domestic product, 19.6 percent of India's, and 6.5 percent of Morocco's. In Mexico, remittances are the third largest source of foreign exchange after oil exports and tourism. And in Turkey, they are four times larger than the country's inflows of foreign direct investment. In most developing countries, remittances are far larger than funds received through official development assistance or foreign portfolio investment. In fact, many expatriate communities routinely organize events to raise money for projects in their home countries.
But the impact of these economic ties goes well beyond supporting individual relatives or helping rebuild the local school. For example, surveys show that about 10 percent of Hispanic immigrants in the United States also trade with their home countries. In fact, the engagement of immigrants in international trade can have a significant economic impact. As James E. Rauch writes in the December 2001 Journal of Economic Literature, over time "a 10 percent increase in immigrants to the United States will increase U.S. exports to the country of origin by 4.7 percent and U.S. imports from the country of origin by 8.3 percent." Rauch also reports that in Canada a 10 percent increase in immigrants from a given country eventually increases Canadian exports to that country by 1.3 percent and imports from there by 3.3 percent. Good morning, Keith, Anecdotally, this jibes with my own observations. During the course of a day's interaction with professionals in the US (say, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Durham, North Carolina) I is not uncommon to run into 15-20 percent foreign-born, based on accent. The interesting thing is that it is not evident whether they have become American citizens or not - and the even more interesting thing is that no one cares about this. Perhaps that is why America is the destination of choice for so many of what we could call the world's well-educated 'mobility.' Cheers, Lawry -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Saturday, August 03, 2002 3:04 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Educational subsidy to US For those who are interested in the extent to which the developed countries are being subsidised by the immigration of qualified people from Third World the following link has plenty of data: <http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/1999/06/carringt.htm> The US receives somewhat more than half of the total brain drain. Keith Hudson
