The brain drain has been one of the most important controversies in less developed countries and even more advanced countries such as Canada. Drain is originally used in water management to mean a pipe or channel that carries away dirty water or other liquid waste. Therefore, the term ‘brain drain’ is used to connote flight of ‘brains’ and thinkers from a country; the brains that a country is badly in need of them. The term ‘brain’ is used to mean all scientists, inventors, innovators, technicians, creative and skilled workers, engineers, physicians, surgeons, specialists and other people with a high level of education. During the 19th century up to World War I, the United States of America was the most important country accepting emigrants because exploitation of resources of the new continent and establishment of infrastructural installations including roads and railroads required manpower. Therefore, a large population from South and Central America as well as Europe and Africa emigrated there. Later, industrialization of the United States changed the America’s emigration pattern and it was willing to take in skilled and specialized emigrants from European countries or other countries that were not adequately industrialized. The literature pertaining to brain drain was formed since the end of the World War II, especially since the 1960s, that is, the time when European countries started to reconstruct war ravages. Several years later industries of those countries were reactivated. This process needed specialized and efficient manpower. As a result, a large number of specialists, engineers and other people, known as ‘brains’ left their developing countries for advanced states. Since that time, plundering human resources started and worked as another obstacle on the way of progress and development of Third World countries.

Some researchers believe that the root cause of all emigrations is failure of societies in meeting the needs of their citizens. Therefore, brain drain, which means emigration of educated manpower from one country to another, stems from their needs. The continuum of these needs differs for specialists in different countries and enjoys various social security, economic, political, scientific and specialist dimensions. However, it must be noted that the brain drain does not simply mean emigration of specialists because students studying in other countries are generally not willing to go back to their countries after completion of their studies.

Despite this fact, brain drain is not an issue for developed countries because if they lose some specialists, they are capable of attracting others; the process known as ‘brain swap’. However, developing countries can neither keep their own elite, nor attract specialists from other countries. Therefore, brain drain would become tangible when exit of specialists and educated manpower is constantly going on while it is not compensated by a reverse current. Anyway, this trend is dealing horrible blows to small and less populated developing countries although emigration of brains from a small country might not be taken seriously by big countries accepting emigrants.

The most obvious effect of brain drain on the country of origin is wastage of costs; that is, wastage of the costs of educating and training expert manpower. Developing countries spend hefty budgets on manpower education, but emigration of educated manpower to industrialized states, especially the United States and Canada costs them dearly in terms of human resources. Some countries pave the way for higher educations of their citizens by paying special subsidies. Such subsidies include interest-free loans, reducing tuition fees of universities, cost-free or inexpensive residence of students in dormitories and contributions for studying abroad. Obviously, the higher the educational level, the higher would be the cost for education in that sector. For this reason, the costs of educating physicians and university professors would increase considerably due to the length of their educational courses. Therefore, emigration of these people to other countries would deal heavy blows to countries of origin.

Based on a theory, education is a public commodity and it has certain positive benefits for society. Therefore, brain drain results in considerable financial losses. Due to the high cost of educating a specialist in Switzerland, which amounts to more than $565,000, economically speaking, the profits of attracting foreign specialists for that country would equal total profits that Iran would earn through exporting saffron in a whole year—e.g., 2000. In the United States total education costs for 12 years before academic studies as well as four years of university study is about $174,000 dollars. On this basis, educational costs of thousands of university graduates that mostly leave undeveloped countries for the United States amounts to billions of dollars, which can be considered as gratuitous and inadvertent contributions by these countries to the United States!

Various sources have indicated the net profits reaped by countries attracting brains. Some estimates show that the United States has earned more than $100 billion in 30 years and has saved more than $5 billion in costs of training specialized manpower during 1970-1977. Therefore, this country and other developed countries took advantage of the knowledge and specialization of elite manpower from all across the world without paying anything. Most emigrants are usually working in such fields as education, engineering, medicine and other specialist fields and their work has clear social benefits for host countries which are ignored by countries of origin. It should be noted that specialists leave developing countries at an age, which is in fact the most active period of their lives, that is, immediately after completion of academic studies. More than 50% of physicians, who arrived in the United States after the 1960s, were below the age of 40 years and about 49% of technicians and engineers that migrated to the United States in 1970 aged below 30 years. Therefore, youngness of emigrants is another positive point for destination countries, but of negative consequences for countries of origin.

Emigration of specialized and efficient manpower would have other consequences too. When specialists leave a country, inefficient people surface and, thus, the cycle of underdevelopment would precipitate.

Many specialists take their families to other countries and this leads to flight of considerable financial resources from that country; capitals that would be required for the economic development of that country. Of course, in some instances, emigrations benefit countries of origin. In 1980s, Mexicans living in the United States were in touch with their birthplaces and sent the money they deposited back to their villages to be spent on constructing schools, sewerage systems and other infrastructures.

In parts of rural areas of Mexico, the main financial source for about half of the families was the money sent by their relatives from other countries. Brain drain can benefit the country of origin after one generation. Some Indian companies in the United States, which have been established years ago by Indian specialists, have managed to provide their country with new facilities by investing in technical colleges of India. Thus, educated elite are a means for transfer of technology and skill to their countries.

Nowadays, screening emigrants has become important in the course of medium- and long-term emigrations to overseas; screening of emigrants that can meet structural and technical needs of the destination country. In this screening, priority would be given to high-ranking mangers and engineers that bring a capital with them. In this manner, the destination country would not have to invest in preparing emigrants whose achieving to specialized levels would entail a high cost. For example, computer, technical and pharmaceutical companies of Switzerland are facing shortage of skilled manpower. However, the government has come to the conclusion that compensating this shortage, apart from high costs, would require thousands of hours of teaching, which equals several years of constant and successful work of a school and university. Therefore, a short-term goal for Switzerland, apart from attracting Swiss specialists, is screening foreign specialists from among those requesting emigration and refugee status.

The factors leading to leaving one’s country and living in another country can be classified in two categories: attracting and deterring factors both of which enjoy economic, social, political and other specialist aspects. The most important deterring factors include increased class division, lack of freedoms, inefficient work culture, shortage of research facilities, low-quality research standards, imbalance between income and expenses, injustice, lawlessness and cronyism. In contrast, other factors attract ‘brains’ which include possibility of going on with one’s studies, social welfare, balance between income and expense, efficient educational system, economic welfare, social and political freedoms, job opportunities and job security.

Some believe that the main asset of a thinking person is their thought and they want to be prominent in the place where they live just like an investor who invests his money where the return is guaranteed. During the Islamic Empire of the 9th and 10th centuries after Hegira, most scientists that gathered in Baghdad during that golden age came from other parts of the world to the capital of the Islamic Empire and since the government did not seek to interfere in their activities or investigated about their personal beliefs, even non-Muslim scientists could carry out their activities in Baghdad with peace of mind. The government did not pursue to impose a special set of tenets (religious, philosophical or political) on scientists and this was a positive factor that appealed to them. Presence of hundreds of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian scientists in the capital of the world of Islam which hailed from other regions of the world is the best evidence to this.

Some researchers believe that the main reason behind brain drain is economic factors. When salary of an industrial worker in the United States is about 80 times his counterpart in China, it is only natural for specialists and skilled manpower to be well off in the United States. Studies have shown that most Canadians have migrated to the United States to evade heavy taxes. However, it is beyond any doubt that the brain drain is not only a result of the greed of specialists, but mainly due to incorrect policies.

Some developing countries are not capable of training specialist manpower and meeting their needs and have to send their university graduates to other countries to continue their studies. Most of those students are so fascinated by the attractions of the host countries that they are not willing to go back to their own countries anymore. Studies show that only half of foreign students graduating from the American universities go back to their home countries. Of course, during critical periods such as revolution, war or any other major upheaval, they promptly go back to the country where they studied. Since they are specialists and familiar with the language of those countries, they would be attracted more rapidly than other emigrants and assume refugee status. Since Western universities enjoy better scientific facilities compared to universities of developing countries, and are in a better situation in terms of new scientific resources and research facilities, they are more successful in attracting the elite and specialists from developing countries. Holding scientific Olympiads is another field for identification of talented students and attracting them to foreign universities. Therefore, all creditable universities of the world are trying to attract the prominent participants of scientific Olympiads and use their thought and capabilities for many years after a short-term investment.

The United States of America has been busy collecting elites from all across the world during the past century through filtering quality of emigrants. As a result, since World War II, nine scientists have obtained Noble Prizes for the United States in physics alone, all of whom were German. During the same period, Germany won only 11 Noble Prizes in physics. Of course, the concern is not solely emigration of a group of top scientists to the Untied States from various countries, but the more worrisome point is that those people took with them a longstanding scientific tradition and found it in another place.

Given the important role of the elite and specialists in the development and advancement of their countries, developing states are trying to find a solution to brain drain or, at least, lessen it and employ those people. They pay attention to the following mechanisms:

1. Creating motivation for people and encouraging them to work inside the country or return from abroad;

2. Considering limitations for specialists to prevent them from leaving the country;

3. Indigenizing educational system.

India, which has been successful in exporting software, has considered solutions to curb brain drain and encourage the specialists to come back. Considering stocks for engineers working at a company is an effective solution adopted by Infosys Co. of India to reduce brain drain. Askari and Cummings (1977) suggested use of dynamic economic policies to prevent brain drain in the Middle East. Some believe that preventing brain drain would depend on sustainable industrial development.

Due to shortage of computer experts, the government of Switzerland is trying to attract Swiss computer specialists living in the United States. Therefore, to get Swiss specialists back to their home, the country has considered such privileges as domicile, automobiles and competitive salaries. Some suggestions presented for attracting Swiss specialists include:

1. Holding doctorate and fellowship courses in needed fields;

2. Opening borders to foreign specialists;

3. More support for talented youth, especially from the low-income strata;

4. Promoting status of science in the country;

5. Increasing investments in science and research;

6. Attracting foreign researchers studying in Switzerland;

7. Supporting Swiss specialists living abroad and making facilities for their return.

The United Nations is implementing a plan known as Transfer of Knowledge through Expatriate Nationals (TOKTEN) to compensate damages resulting from brain drain in developing countries. Based on the plan, volunteer emigrant specialists would travel to their countries for temporary 3-12 week periods and serve the government, universities as well as the state-run and private institutes of their countries. The plan makes way for accommodating specialists with round plane tickets as well as cost of living during the temporary period.

The general census held in the United States in 1990 showed that out of 7 million emigrants living in the America, about 1.5 million had higher education. The emigrants hailed from Asia and Oceania. Out of 128,000 African emigrants living in the United States in that year, about 95,000 were university graduates. In 1990s, Canada was badly harmed through migration of its skilled workforce to the United States. The emigrants enjoyed better education and higher incomes in comparison to the rest of the population. However, while the movement of highly specialized manpower toward the United States had taken on new momentum during those years, specialists from other parts of the world were coming to Canada. The number of emigrants employed by the industrial sector of Canada, outnumbered emigrants leaving Canada for the United States. The number of emigrants coming to Canada from other countries who held master’s and doctorate degrees, on the other hand, equals the number of graduates at all educational levels who left Canada for the United States, so that, in 2001 more than 225,000 specialists went to Canada from various countries. Studies carried out by DeVoretz and Laryea show that the number of directors, physicians, scientists and nurses leaving Canada for the United States during 1993-1994 equaled 40% of total graduates of the same fields during that year. The country earned about $43 billion through emigration of educated emigrants from 1967 to 1987. However, the cost of replacing brains that had left for the United States was estimated at about $12.6 billion.

More than 25,000 graduates of advanced technologies left India, which has many specialists in computer software, in 1960s to settle in the United States. They are now in charge of big companies with good earnings. Also, many Indian specialists are working in other countries including Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Among African countries, Egypt and Ghana, respectively, enjoy the highest share of African emigrants to the United States; emigrants more than 60% of whom enjoy higher education. About 26% of Ghanaian emigrants enjoyed higher educations and are specialists. The government of South Africa is facing the brain drain problem and is under tremendous pressures from its public opinion to expel foreign workforce. Therefore, the country is planning only to allow those emigrants that are needed by the country. In fact, South Africa is incurring heavy losses as a result of brain drain and shortage of specialized manpower including physicians, engineers and information technology experts. Therefore, the country is trying to hunt talents and encourage specialists to come to the country by adopting new policies. During the meeting of finance minister of African countries in Lusaka, Zambia, it was revealed that Africa was losing 20,000 specialists per year and, African governments were forced to use non-African specialists to design and implement their development projects.

Following World War II the brain drain emerged as a full blown phenomenon and emigration of educated and specialist Iranians was exacerbated.

After escalation of student unrests in the 1960s and 70s and inability of universities to accept a higher number of high school graduates, the westward movement of Iranians took new momentum. Even many Iranians who had went to the United States as non-immigrants, decided to settle in that country.

West Germany, England and France were other destinations for Iranian emigrants in the past, but in later years, most of them were attracted to the United States. About 100,000 Iranian students were studying abroad during the academic year 1977-1978, of whom 36,220 were accepted by higher education institutes of the United States and the rest were studying at universities of England, West Germany, France, Australia and Italy.

The number of Iranian students accepted by the American universities stood at 45,340 in the academic year 1978-1979 which coincided with the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The figure reached 51,310 during the academic year of 1979-1980. In fact, Iran accounted for the highest number of foreign students at American universities. Out of the total foreign students enrolled in the United States during the academic year 1978-79, 17% were Iranians followed by Nigeria with 6%.

During that period, the number of students registered in the United States from oil producing countries increased rapidly due to rapid rise in oil prices during the 1970s. The price hike increased Iran’s oil revenues considerably. As a result, part of those revenues, were spent directly by the government or indirectly by families for the study of the Iranian students abroad.

A group of students studying at Western universities settled in those countries after completion of their studies and were later joined by a number of Iranian graduates. A research carried out in 1970 showed that out of graduates of Iranian medical faculties, who had attained medical degrees through heavy spending, 1,626 graduates went to the United States after completion of their studies and settled there. Given the high educational cost of medical graduates and the need of the deprived regions of Iran for their services, the figures produced by the study were very shocking and were published in various Persian and English periodicals.

About 30% of graduates of the Iranian universities left the country in 1971 and went to work for other countries, especially the United States.

Motivations prompting young Iranian medicals to settle in the United States during the pre-revolution years were mostly of specialistic, social and political in nature rather than an economic one.

The former Shah of Iran dissolved all political parties in March 1975, and only one party; the Rastakhiz Party of the Iranian Nation remained active. He asked all the Iranians including civil servants and university staff to become members of the party and only prevented armed forces staff to apply for membership. Shah said in a speech that those who did not accept the principles of the party and did not want to join should leave the country. As a result, a number of political and academic activists who could not tolerate Shah’s backwardness gradually left the country.

In view of the nature of Iranians’ emigration to America, we can argue that most Iranian emigrants enjoyed higher educations and after completion of their studies settled in the United States for various reasons. During 1970-1975, about %28.1 of Iranian emigrants specialized in various fields and the largest groups of them were physicians and surgeons. As reported by Bozorgmehr and Sabbagh (1988), based on a census carried out in the United States in 1980, about 23% of Iranian emigrants held master’s or doctorate degrees, which was very considerable in comparison with the 12.5% figure for other minorities and 7.5% for the total of the US population. In fact, high level of educations characterized Iranian emigrants in the United States.

The outbreak of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the ensuing eight-year war with Iraq caused many Iranians to leave the country most of whom were elites and specialists. In those years, many people left the country by legal or illegal means through air and land borders on the east, west and south of country. Some sources have put the number of Iranian emigrants during 1978-1981 at about 2 million. This massive shift of manpower had harmful economic consequences for the country, because the face value of the population leaving Iran stood at about $400 billion. During the same period, about 2.5 million Afghan refugees and a high number of Iraqi refugees came to Iran, 95% of whom lacked any specialty and were regarded as simple workforce. Besides, foreign refugees cost the country about $3 billion per year. The revolutionary society of those years was more concerned about the money leaving the country and ignored the importance of specialized manpower. In this way, a large number of engineers and specialists left Iran after the Islamic Revolution, especially after inception of the imposed war and most of them went to the United States, Canada or European countries. The Cultural Revolution, which aimed to do away with Western values in the higher education system and attune it with the Islamic tenets closed down universities for three years and during that period, many professors who could not comply with the Islamic norms were purged and most of them left the country.

After the revolution, emigration of physicians was accelerated. For example, a research carried out on physicians and professors of Shiraz University in 1981, showed that more than 70% of full time professors of medical faculty of that university had left the university either willingly or have been purged. To find the real number of physicians who had left the country after the revolution in Iran, endeavors were made in 1988 and correspondence was made with many organizations. However, the then Ministry of Culture and Higher Education wrote a short response, "After the revolution, not only have no physicians have left the country, but also physicians living abroad are increasingly coming back." On the other hand, a magazine published in Los Angeles carried a title saying, "36,000 Iranian Physicians Have Left Iran after the Revolution." Official figures show that the total number of Iranian physicians living in the United States during 1978, 1979, and 1980 stood at 2,306, 2,560 and 2,600, respectively.

Figures presented by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Bureau show that the bureau permitted 258,183 Iranians to enter the United States during 1971-98, about 90% of whom were accepted after the victory of the Islamic Revolution. Anyway, during 1981-1996, Iran ranked fifth among countries with the highest number of refugees in the United States after Vietnam, the former USSR and Cambodia.

Apart from Iranian emigrants who are distributed all across the world, at present, about 165,000 Iranian specialists holding academic degrees are working for the United States’ scientific institutes and industries. About 57% of them hold bachelor’s degrees and above. In fact, Iranians rank the third in this regard in the United States after India and Taiwan. In 1990, about half of the Iranian emigrants working in the United States were engaged in managerial and specialist activities. However, a number of educated Iranian specialists were forced to do work incompatible with their fields of study. For example, an Iranian dentist had to work as administrative official at a vegetable cleaning factory in the United States for a year after emigration and another renowned pediatrician who had migrated to England was forced to work as on-call physician of Gatwick Airport of London after years of joblessness. Meanwhile, many Iranians living abroad who held academic degrees took to business or even taxi driving. However, most Iranian specialists living in the United States of America have gotten the best jobs or founded various specialist associations and continue their studies. There are more than 10 specialistic associations of Iranians in south California, which is considered the main hub of Iranians in the United States. The main nuclei of the Iranian society are located in some neighborhoods in Los Angeles or New York and enjoy the highest urban and welfare standards. On the other hand, studies show that per capita income of 16.6 percent of Iranians living in the United States exceeds 75,000 dollars per year.