In Defense of Brain Drain

by Tim Lee on January 22, 2007 · Comments

Related to our discussion a couple of weeks ago about immigration for high-tech workers, Katherine Mangu-Ward cites a study illustrating one way that a “brain drain” can be good for the country from which the brains drain:

Imagine, if you will, foreign movie makers who come to California. They are much more likely to make excellent movies there–or even to make movies at all, really–and more of their countrymen will get to watch them when they appear, especially if their countrymen have few qualms about bootlegs.

The authors, economists Peter J. Kuhn and Carol McAusland, write that those who remain behind “benefit because ‘their’ brains produce ‘better’ knowledge (such as more effective medicines, more entertaining movies, or more effective software) abroad than if they had remained at home.” This is particularly true in situations where a discrepancy between protections for intellectual property at home and abroad makes it easy for residents of the innovators’ countries of origin to enjoy the fruits of their labors with low transaction costs.

Personally, I find the notion that someone should be forced to live in an impoverished country solely so that his countrymen can benefit from his presence morally repugnant. But even if you buy that premise, it’s not at all clear that liberal immigration of high-skilled workers is, on net, harmful to poor countries. And liberal immigration is undeniably beneficial to the world as a whole.

Comments Posted in: Miscellaneous

  • Tim
    Mike,

    For strictly logistical reasons, I think it might be wise to limit the number of immigrants we admit in any given year, but I don't think we're anywhere close to the limit. A million immigrants a year amounts to one third of one percent of the population. If we were to triple that migration rate, those immigrants would still only amount to about 1 percent of the population.

    I also don't think there's any great evidence that Hispanics are overwhelmingly statist. About a third of them voted for George W. Bush in the last election, which at least suggests they aren't hard-core socialists.

    Finally, I think you overestimate the influence that a poor, uneducated voting block can have on policy. Low-income and minority voters tend to vote at lower rates, and they're more likely to be taken for granted by elected officials. The people who have the biggest influence are wealthy, well-educated, and well-organized. Those will continue to be mostly white people for the foreseeable future.
  • Mike, don't you think that most of the people who like Saudi Arabia the way it is would stay in Saudi Arabia, whereas the ones who move here would be the ones who are more sympathetic to American values?

    No, I don't. I think you make the classic mistake of assuming that desiring work opportunities is the same thing as desiring freedom. Many, many of our past immigrants came here for the former, but not necessarily the latter.


    Also, I have no problem with letting in a lot of skilled immigrants. What America DOES NOT need are more unskilled ones. These are the ones who tend to bring crime and social welfare dependency with them. They are also the least likely to be favorable to economic and personal freedom.


    The biggest problem with the population issue is that we are not stopping the flow of illegal immigrants. If we keep getting 500,000-1,000,000 a year and they keep having kids, the demographics will change. I for one don't want to see millions of people from failed countries pouring into America as an alternative to getting their act together at home. It's one thing to allow the exceptions to flee here, but we don't need every Tom, Dick and Harry.


    Also, I have asked a simple question in the past and received no good answer. When is there too much immigration? Wouldn't it be good to have 300,000,000 new immigrants added to our population over the course of a decade or two? I have yet to hear from libertarians who believe that immigration is an effectively unqualified good for the economy and country, when there are too many people coming here. I'm not necessarily implying you think that it's good for America to have a flood of low or unskilled workers (for obvious statist reasons) but I am curious, when is there "too much immigration?"

  • Tim
    Mike, don't you think that most of the people who like Saudi Arabia the way it is would stay in Saudi Arabia, whereas the ones who move here would be the ones who are more sympathetic to American values?

    And in any event, we're far, far short the point where native-born Americans are in danger of becoming a minority of the electorate. Only about 15 percent of the population is Hispanic, and that dramatically overstates the impact of Hispanic immigrants on the electorate, because not every Hispanic is an immigrant, not every Hispanic is a citizen (and therefore a voter) and Hispanics tend to vote at lower rates than whites.

    Moreover, the vast majority of immigrants we let in today are unskilled. The number of skilled immigrants we let in every year is far smaller. It's just not plausible that (say) doubling the skilled foreign workers we admit into the country would have any significant impact on the electorate.
  • Here's a very simple reason, Tim. Large scale immigration is in fact a migration and culture-changing. If you import millions of people from collectivist countries, you will do two things. First, you will create the environment necessary to slow down the assimilation process, allowing a lot of the old ways to remain for longer. Second, you will have imported millions of people whose whole cultural reference point is anti-individualism. Do you honestly think that America is going to be freer for having 500,000 immigrants from Saudi Arabia come here and vote? No, they'll make America more like Saudi Arabia. That is why I am, on liberty grounds, opposed to large scale immigration. I am not willing to sacrifice my culture and traditions for the sake of cheaper goods at Wal-Mart. I wish I could say that most libertarians weren't as cheap, shiny thing-obsessed as the average house cat.
  • yardape6
    This is a case of matching talent with money. If a person had the ability to come up with a cure for cancer, but was forced to stay in a country with no resources to facilitate research, should they stay? I think not. The "brain drain" might have some short term economic affects, but in the long run everyone is better of because the talent was maximized and society progresses.
  • Roland: Since you didn't elaborate, I'm not sure what you think the downside to liberal immigration would be, but I think the upside is pretty straightforward: peoples' wages will generally reflect their level of productivity, and when people cross borders, they'll usually do so in search of higher, rather than lower wages. Therefore, permitting people greater freedom to cross borders will increase the average productivity of workers and increase the world's wealth.

    There may very well be distributional implications that are undesirable from certain peoples' point of view (for example, blue-collar American workers might not appreciate the competition). But I don't see how you can deny that more open borders will, all else being equal, increase the world's wealth.
  • Roland Dobbins
    Um, not everybody believes that 'liberal immigration is undeniably beneficial to the world as a whole'. That may be your belief, but it's certainly deniable - and I deny it vehemently.
blog comments powered by Disqus

Previous post:

Next post: