Brain Drain or Do visas kill?

A lot of people here in the Netherlands ask me whether I plan to go back to Colombia when I am done with my PhD. Most people think that you should go back, specially if you come from a troubled country. I have always disagreed with that view.

In the case of people that do research, postdoctoral years usually turn out to be the most productive ones. But back in a country with an immature research system, those years are mostly wasted, teaching and trying to do research without students and funding, if you are lucky, or trying to find a job if you are not. I believe that spending postdoctoral years abroad is a much more efficient choice from the society's viewpoint. Those years are key for publishing and networking, and these in turn benefit not only your personal career, but your country.

Government's help for graduates to go abroad in Colombia is usually tied to the condition that you must return immediately after getting the degree (in most cases you actually have to go back to start paying debt). I think this doesn't make much sense, but that appears to be the dominant policy worldwide. Now some research is countering this consensus, even in the extreme case of medical staff emigrating from Africa. There's an editorial in Nature covering Michael Clemens' work.

From the editorial:

Countries and professions with more openness and greater mobility of personnel are more likely to be in touch with global trends — and more likely to attract able trainees in the first place. The worst public healthcare systems, Clemens says, are in French-speaking West Africa, where staff are least likely to emigrate, as France won't let them.

The tendency of perhaps half of today's emigrants to return home later on in their careers is another factor. So is remuneration and the large amounts of cash that migrants send back home. These changes make the old model of immigrant 'donor' societies obsolescent. Communities can benefit, financially and intellectually, from those who have left. It is the degree to which these benefits counteract the unquestionable initial loss that is open to question.

I could not agree more.