Ac version 3 Observation 1: sq 4

Advantages

Brain Drain Advantage

1AC Brain Drain Scenario

Brain Drain now due to lack of opportunities, corruption – plan is key to solve

Arenas 12 – Journalist for the Nebraska Mosaic (Gabriel Medina, “Flip side of Mexican Immigration: Brain Drain”, Nebraska Mosaic, 4/20/2012, http://cojmc.unl.edu/mosaic/2012/04/20/1642)//BD

While most news of Mexicans making their way north focuses on people at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, these three represent what’s happening at the other end of that scale. They are part of a brain drain that is robbing Mexico of its well-educated men and women.¶ Two reasons exist for this brain drain, according to Juan Ramón de la Fuente, former chancellor of the Mexican National Autonomous University: the lack of job opportunities in Mexico and Mexico’s high level of insecurity.¶ Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, an Argentinean professor and Hispanic immigration expert at New York University, spoke recently at UNL and offered additional reasons for this brain drain.¶ Suarez-Orozco, who holds a doctorate in anthropology, said highly educated Mexicans want better working conditions. They want jobs in which they have better research opportunities and labs, as well as better salaries and opportunities to get specialized scholarships and fellowships.¶ The number of Mexican-born professionals who live in the U.S. doubled between 1997 and 2007, from 259,000 to 552,000, an annual average growth rate of 11 percent. During that same period, the number of people in Mexico who earned a bachelor’s degree grew only 6 percent.¶ “Never before in the history of the United States have so many highly educated immigrants arrived into our country in such high numbers,” Suarez Orozco said. “Today a quarter of all physicians in our country are immigrant-born, 40 percent of all the engineers in the United States are foreign, a third of all the folk with doctorates in the United States are foreign-born.”¶ Mexico’s supply of educated people is growing five times faster than the population, but job opportunities for professionals are not expanding as fast, according to the Migration Policy Institute. One reason this is happening is because Mexico’s government and the private sector are not creating enough high skilled jobs.¶ To stop this brain drain the Mexican government and the private sector need to create more high-skilled jobs; they have to hire people based on their credentials and not on friendship or nepotism; they have to raise the salaries of highly educated people and they have to keep on fighting against organized crime

Mexican scientists aren’t able to enter Nano-Workforce – forcing brain drain overseas
Foladori and Lau 2k7

(ReLANS coordinators, Doctoral Program in Development Studies Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas Zacatecas, México, “Nanotechnologies in Latin America,” pg online @ http://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/Manuskripte_81.pdf //um-ef)

The political-business interests are present in the creation of high technology industrial parks. The idea is to provide the infrastructure and general conditions to allow national and transnational enterprises to open their doors, supported by research centers on high technology. The scientific and technological parks are centers to foster innovation. The success of these parks in México depends on reversing the exodus of manufacturing enterprises, which has been affecting the economy for the past decade. Costs have declined worldwide due to several technical advances in telecommunications, storage systems, transportation and the reduction of regulations. This has encouraged U.S.-based enterprises to move to South-East Asia. That trend includes the mobility of qualified personnel and most activities related to prototype design and, sometimes, the entire production process. At the same time, China, Thailand and Singapore have increased the production share of the manufacturing industry within their Gross National Product (“GNP”), while that share has decreased in the U.S. and México (Hung & León, 2005). This tendency contradicts the creation of R&D industrial parks and puts them at risk. Moreover, these circumstances add more pressure to scientists and technicians who, due to the lack of opportunities, migrate to other countries. The lack of scientific training at the basic education, high school and university levels reduces the possibility of obtaining nanotechnology-related positions. A basic but comprehensive training in science and math is essential to encourage several countries to jump from underdevelopment to development (e.g., South Korea), a possibility that México is not realizing4

***1AC Brain drain collapses Mexico’s economy and prevents competitiveness – Mexican Technology Professionals are Critical

Arenas 12 – journalist (Gabriel, “Flip Side of Mexican Immigration: Brain Drain,” University of Nebraska, 4/20/12, http://cojmc.unl.edu/mosaic/2012/04/20/1642/)//RH

“The problem is very serious,” said Alejandro Diaz-Bautista, an economics professor at Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, Mexico, and an expert in immigration and economics integration between Mexico and the United States. “This brain drain in developing countries like Mexico is an obstacle for economic growth, modernization and the improvement of quality of life.” Diaz-Bautista said the brain drain is one reason the Mexican economy can’t compete with those of the U.S., Europe or Japan. In Mexico, between 1990 and 2000, the number of people who graduated from college increased 6.7 percent, but the economy grew only 3.5 percent, suggesting too few jobs were created. Forty-five percent of Mexicans who graduated from college that decade did not find a job appropriate to their education level. Even though Salvador Moguel earned his master’s degree at the State University of New York and his doctorate at New Mexico State University, he wanted to go back to Mexico to work and live. The problem: He didn’t get a good offer. Moguel started living in the U.S. in the 1990s when he was working on his master’s degree. He returned to Mexico and worked for a few years. When he decided to enroll in a doctoral program, he planned to do it at Mexico’s UNAM. But they didn’t accept him. And he was surprised at the reason. “They told me they didn’t think I could be a good researcher because I was almost 30,” he said. So he earned his doctorate in the U.S., then returned to Mexico to look for a job. When he didn’t get one, he once again returned to the U.S. to teach and conduct research. “There are no equal opportunities in Mexico, like there is in the U.S.,” he said. “Your credentials are not enough for you to get a good job.” Between 1997 and 2007, the presence of Mexican professionals working in foreign countries grew 153 percent, from 411,000 to 1.4 million people, according to the Mexican Public Education Ministry. About 5 million Mexicans with more education than the average Mexican—8.6 years in school—decided to come to live in the U.S. in those years. UNL economics Professor Hendrik Van den Berg said this trend, which is worldwide, is likely to continue or even increase: Educated people from undeveloped countries will keep on migrating to developed countries to get a better life. “The only way to stop this brain drain is to have a booming Mexican economy,” he said. “That’s what Brazil has been able to do. Their economy is going well, and I know quite a number of Brazilians that were highly educated and were here illegally. But now they are back in Brazil.” According to the MPI, the Department of Homeland Security issued 300,000 temporary working visas to highly skilled Mexicans in 2009 alone. This brain drain may worry the Mexican government, but it invests only about $3,400 toward the education of each Mexican student enrolled in public institutions of higher learning, an amount insufficient to fully educate and train the next generation. Government officials respond that Mexico is a developing country, that it lacks the necessary funds. This migration of qualified people has cost Mexico approximately $7 billion according to the country’s Public Education Ministry. “The Mexican government and the universities don’t pay good salaries to professors with doctorates,” Calzada said. “The problem is that their budget is not big enough to do good scientific research.” However, other developing countries—such as Brazil and India—are finding ways to invest more money in education, with the result that they are retaining more of their human capital. “The Mexican government needs to create long-term policies that stimulate the private sector, so they hire or repatriate Mexican-educated individuals that work in foreign countries,” Juan Ramon de la Fuente, former chancellor of the Mexican National Autonomous University, said last June during a conference in Madrid titled “Redefining the Brain Drain.” De la Fuente, currently president of the International Association of Universities, said the brain drain has occurred for two reasons: People can’t find enough job opportunities and Mexico’s high level of insecurity. By March 2011, nearly 37 percent of the unemployed in Mexico had at least a high school education, according to the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Information Technology. This suggests that neither the private nor the public sectors in Mexico are creating enough jobs for highly educated and skilled people. “These people represent a tremendous potential for Mexico’s future economic development,” said Rodolfo Tuirán, Mexico’s education undersecretary and a demographic expert. “Their migration needs to be reversed, or Mexico risks its future.”

US-Mexican collaboration is key—solves regulations and national projects

Kay et al 09 - School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology; Shapira- Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester (Luciano, Philip, “Developing nanotechnology in Latin America”, 02/11/2009, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2988220/#__ffn_sectitle//VS)

Mexico is second in Latin America by published nanotechnology articles (and also by population). In 2004, there were eleven nanotechnology research groups at three universities and two research institutes, working primarily in new materials development (Malsch 2004); in 2007, an external European mission identified more than a dozen institutions with active nanotechnology research programs, again with a strong presence in nanomaterials (NanoforumEULA 2007). A few companies are also commercializing nanotechnology in Mexico, although academic–industry relationships are reported as weak (Malsch 2004). An important aspect for Mexico is the link maintained with the US in terms of cooperation for high-technology development which, jointly with the geographic proximity to that country, are hoped to offer Mexico an advantage for future commercialization of nanotechnology compared with other countries of Latin America. There are already some initiatives for supplying the semiconductor and other high-tech industries. For example, the project for the Silicon Border Development Science Park started in 2006 with the goal of becoming the first high-tech park in Latin America that is specialized at the nanoscale (Foladori and Zayago2007). However, Mexico does not have a national program for developing these technologies. Indeed, until 2005 there was no federal program financing, organizing, or regulating nanotechnology (Foladori2006). Additionally, Mexico consistently faces challenges of retaining its most highly talented researchers in the face of superior research conditions and salaries in the US.

Uniq: Mexico S&T Collapsing

Current S&T programs fail – brain drain, high importation of technology, divide between research and industry, lack of tax exemptions

Rosen 11 – Science Journalist, MSc in science communication at Imperial College London (Cecelia, “Rebuilding Mexico’s science and technology capacity”, SciDev.net, 5/30/11, http://www.scidev.net/global/migration/feature/rebuilding-mexico-s-science-and-technology-capacity-1.html)//BD

[MEXICO CITY] Despite being one of the richest countries in Latin America, Mexico has made little headway in developing its own science and technology (S&T) programmes in recent years — and now its dependency on imported technology is reaching a critical level.¶ According to Arturo Menchaca-Rocha, president of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, purchases of imported high-technology goods increased ten-fold over the past decade, royalty payments for technology went up by a factor of five — and royalties from home-grown Mexican technologies have halved.¶ "Today, Mexico buys 94 per cent of its technology — only six per cent is the result of our own inventions," Menchaca-Rocha tells SciDev.Net.¶ Many of the reasons are well known. Mexico is grappling with an increasing brain drain of scientists, which may have cost the country more than US$3 million last year, estimates Menchaca-Rocha. Training new scientists takes time and only one in 10,000 of the population has a PhD.¶ Other problems include small-scale, and often marginal or isolated, production of local technology, and a marked division between academia and industry — despite initiatives such as innovation offices at public universities and tax incentives for companies.¶ Poor integration of basic research and industry is one of the main reasons for turning to imported technologies.¶ When measured by patent production and inventive capacity, Mexico ranks last among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.¶ "Science is not contributing to the development of the country — that's our biggest concern. The scientific and technological system was not designed to serve society," says Sergio Ulloa, former president of the Mexican Association of Directors of Applied Research and Technological Development (ADIAT).¶ The lack of effective and long-term associations between academia and the private sector is the most critical problem to address in the short term, he says.¶ In late 2009, the Science and Technological Consultative Forum (FCCyT) — an independent body that advises the government on S&T issues — and ten other organisations formed the Vincula group (vincula means 'connections' in Spanish), also known as the G11, to promote S&T on behalf of the 'triple helix': academia, government and industry. It is the first time the different sectors have worked together in this way.¶ "We now see businesspeople defending basic research and researchers defending innovation," says Juan Pedro Laclette, head of the group. "With this initiative, agreed by everyone, we have made a big change."¶ ADIAT, which is part of the G11, recently launched a national programme to train specialists to transfer technology from research centres and universities to industry. Some 600 specialists have been trained since October and will start working at public and private institutions next year.¶ The government's main technology initiative was a now-defunct programme of tax exemptions, set up in 2002 by the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) to stimulate research and innovation through tax exemptions to companies investing in Mexican R&D.¶ The council cancelled the US$1.3 billion programme in January 2009 after criticism that activities were not necessarily 'research', and that big companies were using it for tax avoidance.¶ Three new programmes to support different innovation stages in companies, particularly small- and medium- sized firms, were established, but many businesspeople and some academics want the government to restore tax exemptions.¶ José Enrique Villa Rivera, who took over as director of CONACYT in March, said in a meeting with parliamentarians in early April he would revive the tax exemption scheme under a new programme, without providing details of how it would work.¶ Avelino Cortizo, head of research, innovation and technological development at the Mexican Employers' Confederation (Coparmex), has joined the call by some G11 members to restore the programme, calling its cancellation an "irresponsible decision".¶ "Its disappearance puts Mexico at a disadvantage against other countries with fiscal instruments and promotion of technological development," says Cortizo.¶ Meanwhile Coparmex is working on setting up the country's first innovation network and communication platform, to bring together 3,500 companies with national and foreign research centres during its first phase.¶

Uniq: S&T Critical

And, S&T is at CRITICAL levels – Government action is key

WashingtonExec 4/8

(“INSA Releases Latest White Paper on Necessity of Science and Technology Investments,” pg online @

The Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) recently released its latest white paper, Emerging Science and Technologies: Securing the Nation through Discovery and Innovation. The paper, authored by the INSA Technology and Innovation Council, makes a case for the investment of science and technology saying in its Executive Summary, investment is “integral to the economic growth and development as well as national security.” The paper cites the erosion of U.S. leadership in science and technology (S&T) to the Asian S&T investment and the results of the European Union’s (EU) effort to boost its relative competitiveness in research and development (R&D), innovation and high technology. “The white paper offers a comprehensive look across the S&T community and provides provocative ideas for future research,” said Joseph DeTrani, INSA’s president ambassador. “I applaud our Council on Technology and Innovation for taking on this important task. The U.S. Intelligence Community is the best in the world and continued emphasis on basic research, even in tough budget times, will ensure our intelligence agencies are able to protect our nation and enhance our global leadership in the future.” The white paper brings to light the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) identification of the five capability gaps that may enable the U.S. to better collect and assess intelligence. The idea is to maintain an advantage over our adversaries. Those five capability gaps include: bio-inspired computing architectures energy harvesting advanced materials for computing human-inspired big data self-protecting data The authors of the paper used ODNI’s five high-priority technological needs, as an outline for year’s white paper. The five high-priority technological needs include the following: Technical Collection, Communication and Sharing Intelligence, Human Intelligence (HUMINT)-Collection and Operations, Intelligence and Analysis, Protection of the Intelligence Enterprise. Dr. Allan Sonsteby, INSA Technology and Innovation Council white paper lead and Associate Director of the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State University, said, “The INSA Technology and Innovation Council’s white paper identifies areas for more detailed focus in S&T and will serve as a basis for government and industry leaders addressing the future development of and investment in our nation’s security. The analysis, data and recommendations included in this paper are not meant to be all-inclusive or prioritized, but serve as a catalyst for government and industry discussion of S&T investments for the IC’s future.”

Uniq: Brain Drain High

Brain drain happening now – insufficient employment – reduces economic growth

Guerrero and Bolay 5 – Ph.D Cum Laude in Political Sciences , independent consultant, Ph.D in Political Sciences, Director of Cooperation at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Gabriela and Jean-Claude, Enhancing development through knowledge circulation: a different view of the migration of highly skilled Mexicans,” Global Commission on International Migration, Nov 2005, http://www.migrationdevelopment.org/fileadmin/data/resources/brain_drain/research_papers/GMP_51_english_01.pdf)//RH

In the last decade, and coinciding with an intensification of the globalisation debate, the brain drain issue was revived within research and political discussion, and this highlighted the negative effects for developing countries and its impact on economic progress. As such, the majority of the literature describes brain drain as flows of HRST in one direction: from the periphery to the centre (Salt, 1997; Carrington and Detragiache, 1998; Cervantes and Guellec, 2002), and emphasizes the losses to countries of origin because of the scarcity of highly skilled workers (Lowell, 2003) and an inverse transfer of technology (Salt, 1997). These discussions culminated in a collection of studies by the International Labour Organization (ILO) which, although the authors agreed that international migration can provide important benefits to developing countries, concluded that in overall terms, brain drain definitively reduces economic growth in the South due to the loss in education, investment and the reduction in human capital (Lowell and Findlay, 2001; Lowell, Findlay and Stewart, 2004). In the case of Mexico, there has been an increase in the number of students, scientists and highly skilled professionals emigrating to the North over the last few years. This increase is partly due to the traditional internationalisation of science (Didou, 2004), but it is also a result of Mexico’s inability to generate sufficient employment, especially for its highly skilled workers (La Jornada, 30/06/05). Despite this situation, the issue has not been given the importance that it deserves and the only interest shown has been sporadic and unsystematic, which has resulted in a dearth of literature on the dynamics and effects of Mexican HRST migrations. However, there are a number of theoretical articles and empirical studies that are worthy of mention. In these contributions, there is a predominance of the traditional paradigm that considers the movement of HRST as a drain and they adopt a nationalistic stance, denouncing the North’s “raid” of Southern brains and the resulting “decapitalization” of developing countries to the benefit of the North. Following these lines, Licea de Arenas (2004) affirms that the intellectual capital of countries such as Mexico will not grow as long as industrialized countries continue to attract their HRST, a situation which increases the North’s productivity at the South’s expense. The concept of an internal brain drain (Castaños-Lomnitz [coord.] 2004) appears in the literature and refers to those highly qualified individuals (Mexicans), who return to their country of origin after graduating from a foreign university or after a period working at a foreign research centre, but who abandon their academic career in pursuit of other professional activities. In Mexico, this phenomenon has become increasingly widespread because of the difficult conditions confronted by career academics, fundamentally due to the scarcity of positions, infrastructure and resources. Temporary brain drain (Félix, 2003) refers to student assistants and academics involved in “technical” scientific work at foreign research centres and who provide raw data (information, symbols and concepts for subsequent application) to laboratory directors or projects through their research. These individuals are becoming symbolic analysts, and they are helping to create a new working class within the knowledge economy. According to Félix (2003) the temporary brain drain has a greater impact on the South than the permanent brain drain. In other cases, the terms brain waste (Salt, 1997), underemployment (Licea de Arenas, 2004) or over-education (Pecoraro, 2004) are used to describe those HRST expatriates from the South whose knowledge is not used in their countries of destination since they are employed in jobs below the level of their education, skills or experience, or even because they are excluded from the labour market. This scenario is becoming increasingly common, and it highlights the paradoxical situation whereby the countries of origin lose human resources of great value while the destination countries often fail to take advantage of such capital (Riaño, 2003).

Efforts to stop brain drain have failed – lack of opportunities and resources in Mexico

Guerrero and Bolay 5 – Ph.D Cum Laude in Political Sciences , independent consultant, Ph.D in Political Sciences, Director of Cooperation at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Gabriela and Jean-Claude, Enhancing development through knowledge circulation: a different view of the migration of highly skilled Mexicans,” Global Commission on International Migration, Nov 2005, http://www.migrationdevelopment.org/fileadmin/data/resources/brain_drain/research_papers/GMP_51_english_01.pdf)//RH

According to Conacyt, approximately 1,400 Mexican researchers were repatriated in the period between 1991 and 1997 (an annual average of 200), and this required an investment of approximately 126. 6 million pesos during these seven years (approximately US $11. 5 million). Despite the elevated cost, the Repatriation Programme has not been able to effectively implement its objectives because of the lack of opportunities in Mexico for scientists wishing to repatriate and form part of a research centre. Furthermore, the laboratories, equipment and other materials that are needed to guarantee the continuity of the research projects of repatriated scientists are usually insufficient. In this respect, the Mexican academic sector will unquestionably find itself left behind because of insufficient government support and the lack of alternatives in Mexico. This situation could, however, be improved if there were stronger links between the private and academic sectors. In overall terms, the Repatriation Programme does not have the capacity to redress the international imbalances that attract the highly qualified élite towards the centres of major scientific and technological advancements in the industrialized world (CastañosLomnitz, Rodríguez-Sala and Herrera, 2004).

Brain drain is causing massive migration of professionals from Latin America – ILO data proves

Guerrero and Bolay 5 – Ph.D Cum Laude in Political Sciences , independent consultant, Ph.D in Political Sciences, Director of Cooperation at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Gabriela and Jean-Claude, Enhancing development through knowledge circulation: a different view of the migration of highly skilled Mexicans,” Global Commission on International Migration, Nov 2005, http://www.migrationdevelopment.org/fileadmin/data/resources/brain_drain/research_papers/GMP_51_english_01.pdf)//RH

But what, we should ask, is the real magnitude of the brain drain? In general terms, Barré et al. (2003) estimate that about two thirds of tertiary level students from the countries of the South remain in the host countries of the North once they have completed their studies. According to data from the ILO [International Labour Organization], developing countries lose between 10% and 30% of their HRST to industrialized countries (Lowell and Findlay, 2001), and in some regions of the world the outflow is considerably higher. For example, it is estimated that nearly 75% of all individuals from Africa, 50% of those from Asia and 47% of those from Latin America who migrate to industrialized countries possess tertiary qualifications. Another estimate indicates that at least 400,000 scientists and engineers from developing countries are carrying out research and development activities in industrialized countries, compared to approximately 1.2 million involved in such activities in their countries of origin (Meyer and Brown, 1999). The implication here is that a third of the South’s scientists and engineers have expatriated to the North.

Mexico brain drain empirically exists – long-term study proves

Guerrero and Bolay 5 – Ph.D Cum Laude in Political Sciences , independent consultant, Ph.D in Political Sciences, Director of Cooperation at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Gabriela and Jean-Claude, Enhancing development through knowledge circulation: a different view of the migration of highly skilled Mexicans,” Global Commission on International Migration, Nov 2005, http://www.migrationdevelopment.org/fileadmin/data/resources/brain_drain/research_papers/GMP_51_english_01.pdf)//RH

Another study (Licea de Arenas, 2004) studies the highly skilled during the period from 1980 to 1998, and observes that 1,678 students receive their Ph. D. s from universities in the United States. Of these only slightly more than 20% (only 363) returned to the SNI to explicitly seek recognition of their scientific activities. The author refers to those graduates who do not become part of the Mexican scientific community, and who total nearly 80%, as “cerebros fugados” or brain escapees.

Uniq: Brain Drain Now – Collapse Econ

Current nanotech programs cause brain drain and make economic collapse inevitable – plan is key to retain jobs in Mexico

Torres and Wittchen 9 (Mario Alberto Arauz Torres and Urszula Wittchen, “Brain Drain across the Globe: Country Case Studies,” 2009, p. 13-16

Mexico¶ There are well known images of Mexicans swimming across the Rio Grande, jumping the fence at US-Mexican border, dying in enclosed railroad box cars, meeting death in the hot Arizona desert. Such incidents confronted with racialized immigration policies demand immigration reform (Loyd and Andrew, 2007) but for many years, there has also been a constant flood of other types of Mexican immigrants - wealthy and well educated professionals or students and tourists who decide to stay in the US. “Nowadays, Americans are benefiting from both gardeners and engineers coming to the United States” - says Jorge Dominguez, professor of Mexican and Latin American politics and economics at Harvard University - “that’s a significant shift in migration patterns” (UPI, 2008). It is calculated that around 6,000 Mexican professionals with PhDs work outside the country. However, between 1991 and 2000, over 2,000 Mexicans with doctorates residing abroad agreed to return to Mexico. They were offered one year of salary support from Mexico’s Presidential Fund for Retention, what cost the Mexican federal government US$56 million (Clemens, 2009).¶ In 1994, Mexico began its economic integration with the United States and Canada within the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In 2006, Mexicans living abroad, primarily in the United States and Canada, sent an astonishing $20 billion to their home country. These remittances became the largest source of foreign revenues, fuelling the nation’s trade surplus. The case of Mexico is exceptional in terms of the impact of remittances on the educational choices of “those remaining behind” (TRB). People from rural parts of Mexico planning to migrate to the USA have little incentive to invest in education, as Mexicans generally get unskilled jobs there. Furthermore McKenzie and Rapoport (2006) show that the prospect of emigrating from Mexico for low-skill but high paying jobs in the United States might even to diminish investment in education in Mexico. They investigated households supported by migrant family members and found that boys from these families were 22% less likely to complete junior high school (for both boys and girls the investigation result was 15%). Mexican families have to make a principal choice between investing in schooling in Mexico, and investing in arrangements for migration to unskilled work abroad. The latter option is perceived as a short-term and quicker refunding investment.¶ Close to 17% of migrants arriving in the US during the 1980s had at least a college degree - 10.4% had bachelor’s and 6.5% had a graduate degree; however, the same indices for Mexican migrants are only 2.3% and 1.4%, respectively (Özden, 2005). Since it is relatively easy for migrants from Mexico to enter the US whether illegally or via family preferences, they make up the bulk of migrants at the low end of the education spectrum, concludes Özden. (ibid.)¶ There have been two waves in the exodus of Mexican professionals. First in 1982–1986, the time of economic crisis when, after the devaluation of the peso, the economy collapsed and many middle class Mexican families moved to the United States, Canada, and Spain. Second, during the last two years of Vicente Fox’s administration, 2004–2006, when employment opportunities for professionals stagnated. In 2002, about 12% of Mexico’s labour force resided in the US, and 30% of Mexicans with PhDs. Additionally, 79% of all science students that the Mexican government had funded to study in the USA (CONACYT programs) never returned to work in Mexico (Vitela, 2002). The emigration of the best and the brightest of Mexicans to the USA is caused by the present and worsening economic crisis in Mexico. In 2004, 684,000 Mexicans with university degrees were unemployed (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, Geografia e Informatica - INEGI).¶ NAFTA’s first decade (1994–2004) provided Mexico, among others, with educational opportunities for its students abroad but also resulted in brain drain. Since Mexicans become better educated, many are also sought by foreign companies. Australia, for example, is in such a need of certain professionals (like accountants and nurses), that it offers to “sponsor” Mexican professionals for one year, paying their expenses, expecting that during that time they will decide to remain abroad. Canadian universities send recruiters to the top private Mexican colleges to lure full-tuition paying students to Canada’s top schools. Japan, which depends on Mexico for one-third of all its organic products, sponsors fairs to attract Mexican agricultural professionals. Ireland sponsors job fairs for Mexican professionals, stating that proficiency in English is the only requirement to get a job. As result of these campaigns, thousands of Mexican professionals and graduate degree holders emigrated between 2005 and 2009, mainly to these countries, but also to France and Germany. There are worries that this “continuing emigration of intellectual capital, threatens Mexico’s prospects for economic development” (Nevaer, 2007).¶ The number of Mexican immigrants leaving college campuses increases, including the alumni of prestigious Monterrey Institute of Technology, known as “Mexico’s MIT”. The press claims that well-educated immigrants exile themselves from a country that has failed to lower the income and opportunity gap between it and its wealthy northern neighbour, or provide basic security for its population (Corchado, 2008). According to the International Organization for Migration, which studied the exodus of educated Mexicans to the United States, an estimated 14,000 of the 19,000 Mexicans with doctorates live in the US, many in north Texas. The number of Mexicans making leaving for the United States recently doubled in 2005 - from 275,000 emigrating annually ten years ago, to an estimated 500,000 a year nowadays - and this trend continues. Nearly half of them are specialists or professionals, who immigrate legally through special work visas. The Mexican government makes efforts to strengthening ties with Mexican expatriates, as part of the Mexicans Abroad Program, and the new Red de Talentos (Network of Talents), which targets Mexican entrepreneurs. The idea is to encourage investment in Mexico to create jobs there, and maybe to bring some of them back. But there are also mental barriers, difficult to surmount. A good exemplification of the growing unwillingness and rising difficulties with making the decision to return among migrants who have successfully spent a long time abroad can be found in the words of the Mexican potential expat in the US, who first “believed that if only there were a true democracy in Mexico, if only there were a more open economy, if only Mexico were more closely linked to the United States through a free trade agreement, if only there were more jobs and no peso crises - then Mexican workers would stay home to raise their families and build their country rather than making the journey to the US”. But now, when many of these expectations have become a reality, the old “if onlys” have been replaced by new ones: “If only jobs in Mexico paid better, if only free trade brought more benefits, if only the political parties weren’t always fighting, if only there weren’t so many drug killings. And if only there wasn’t such a demand in the United States for young, ambitious students like them” (Corchado, 2008).

Uniq: Brain Drain High

Brain Drain in Mexico now – shift in migration patterns, remittances, low education investment, weak Mexican economy

Torres and Wittchen 09 – Researchers at Adam Mickiewicz University working on Erasmus Mundus projects (Mario Alberto and Urszula, “Brain Drain across the Globe: Country Case Studies”, Mundus project, 2009, http://pre.docdat.com/docs/index-114593.html)//BD

There are well known images of Mexicans swimming across the Rio Grande, jumping the fence at US-Mexican border, dying in enclosed railroad box cars, meeting death in the hot Arizona desert. Such incidents confronted with racialized immigration policies demand immigration reform (Loyd and Andrew, 2007) But for many years, there has also been a constant flood of other types of Mexican immigrants - wealthy and well educated professionals or students and tourists who decide to stay in the US. “Nowadays, Americans are benefiting from both gardeners and engineers coming to the United States” - says Jorge Dominguez, professor of Mexican and Latin American politics and economics at Harvard University - “that’s a significant shift in migration patterns” (UPI, 2008). It is calculated that around 6,000 Mexican professionals with PhDs work outside the country. However, between 1991 and 2000, over 2,000 Mexicans with doctorates residing abroad agreed to return to Mexico. They were offered one year of salary support from Mexico’s Presidential Fund for Retention, what cost the Mexican federal government US$56 million (Clemens, 2009).¶ In 1994, Mexico began its economic integration with the United States and Canada within the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In 2006, Mexicans living abroad, primarily in the United States and Canada, sent an astonishing $20 billion to their home country. These remittances became the largest source of foreign revenues, fuelling the nation’s trade surplus. The case of Mexico is exceptional in terms of the impact of remittances on the educational choices of “those remaining behind” (TRB). People from rural parts of Mexico planning to migrate to the USA have little incentive to invest in education, as Mexicans generally get unskilled jobs there. Furthermore McKenzie and Rapoport (2006) show that the prospect of emigrating from Mexico for low-skill but high paying jobs in the United States might even to diminish investment in education in Mexico. They investigated households supported by migrant family members and found that boys from these families were 22% less likely to complete junior high school (for both boys and girls the investigation result was 15%). Mexican families have to make a principal choice between investing in schooling in Mexico, and investing in arrangements for migration to unskilled work abroad. The latter option is perceived as a short-term and quicker refunding investment.¶ Close to 17% of migrants arriving in the US during the 1980s had at least a college degree - 10.4% had bachelor’s and 6.5% had a graduate degree; however, the same indices for Mexican migrants are only 2.3% and 1.4%, respectively (Özden, 2005). Since it is relatively easy for migrants from Mexico to enter the US whether illegally or via family preferences, they make up the bulk of migrants at the low end of the education spectrum, concludes Özden. (ibid.)¶ There have been two waves in the exodus of Mexican professionals. First in 1982–1986, the time of economic crisis when, after the devaluation of the peso, the economy collapsed and many middle class Mexican families moved to the United States, Canada, and Spain. Second, during the last two years of Vicente Fox’s administration, 2004–2006, when employment opportunities for professionals stagnated. In 2002, about 12% of Mexico’s labour force resided in the US, and 30% of Mexicans with PhDs. Additionally, 79% of all science students that the Mexican government had funded to study in the USA (CONACYT programs) never returned to work in Mexico (Vitela, 2002). The emigration of the best and the brightest of Mexicans to the USA is caused by the present and worsening economic crisis in Mexico. In 2004, 684,000 Mexicans with university degrees were unemployed (Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, Geografia e Informatica - INEGI).¶ NAFTA’s first decade (1994–2004) provided Mexico, among others, with educational opportunities for its students abroad but also resulted in brain drain. Since Mexicans become better educated, many are also sought by foreign companies. Australia, for example, is in such a need of certain professionals (like accountants and nurses), that it offers to “sponsor” Mexican professionals for one year, paying their expenses, expecting that during that time they will decide to remain abroad. Canadian universities send recruiters to the top private Mexican colleges to lure full-tuition paying students to Canada’s top schools. Japan, which depends on Mexico for one-third of all its organic products, sponsors fairs to attract Mexican agricultural professionals. Ireland sponsors job fairs for Mexican professionals, stating that proficiency in English is the only requirement to get a job. As result of these campaigns, thousands of Mexican professionals and graduate degree holders emigrated between 2005 and 2009, mainly to these countries, but also to France and Germany. There are worries that this “continuing emigration of intellectual capital, threatens Mexico’s prospects for economic development” (Nevaer, 2007).¶

Internals: Brain Drain Collapses Mexico Econ

Brain Drain happening now and is hurting the Mexican Economy – lack of opportunities, better salaries, better security

Millán 11 – Reporter for the San Diego Red (Omar, “Mexico’s brain drain to U.S. ‘a phenomenal loss’”, San Diego Red, 12/13/11, http://www.sandiegored.com/noticias/21150/Mexico-s-brain-drain-to-U-S-a-phenomenal-loss/)//BD

TIJUANA – The brain drain and flight of human capital of Mexicans who immigrate north is the equivalent of transferring $6 billion annually to the United States, about .5 per cent of that country’s GNP, said a leading researcher.¶ Alejandro Díaz Bautista, a member of Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology and an economics professor at the College of the Northern Border, said that the number of Mexican professionals living abroad in the last few years grew by 153 per cent, from 411,000 to 1.3 million.¶ This exodus constitutes “a phenomenal economic loss for Mexico” in the last six years, he said.¶ The investment made developing that capacity is lost, as is the possibility that these professionals’ work will contribute to Mexico’s development and economic growth, he said.¶ This migration involves talented people already educated, such as scientists, who move from Mexico to the United States or other developed countries.¶ Their departure is principally driven by the lack of opportunities, by the search for better salaries, and for greater security and a better standard of life.¶ “In today’s knowledge-based world, it’s more valuable to have these minds who can contribute to economic development than to take away the product of a gold mine or a part of a country’s oil,” Díaz Bautista said.¶ In the last few years, it’s estimated that more than five million Mexicans with an education above high school have decided to move to the United States, which shows that the programs to bring them back home have failed.¶ Developing countries such as Mexico need a public policy that tries to retain its qualified professionals by offering them better employment options and incentives to those who have left to return home to contribute to their country’s economy, he said.¶ He said that Mexico has generated 8 million professionals in the last few years, and that 900,000 of them are already in the United States. He said that at least 125,000 people with a master’s or doctorates have left the country.¶ Among the Latin American countries, Mexico’s suffers the most from this brain drain. He said that loss will have grave consequences for years to come.

Internals Brain Drain = Loss Professionals

Brain drain hurts countries – lack of development, lack of human capital, poor education, healthcare, and economies, loss of medical professionals

Torres and Wittchen 09 – Researchers at Adam Mickiewicz University working on Erasmus Mundus projects (Mario Alberto and Urszula, “Brain Drain across the Globe: Country Case Studies”, Mundus project, 2009, http://pre.docdat.com/docs/index-114593.html)//BD
Although the mobility of the skilled can be considered to be a positive phenomenon from the point of view of global innovation, on the contrary on the national level the migration of the skilled, in specific conditions, is an obstacle to local development and may even aggravate underdevelopment, depriving poor countries of their scarce human resources. The characteristic attribute of international migration of workers is its selectiveness. Countries receiving the largest numbers of immigrants have introduced selective policies favouring educated people. In effect, the world’s poorest countries are trapped in unending cycles of deprivation: the lack of education, healthcare, and economic opportunity perpetuates these same conditions for future generations. A society’s collective inability to foster positive change leads to passivity and deepening problems. The technological gap between countries at various stages of development continues to grow. Of all the talent lost from developing countries, the loss of medical professionals is perhaps of the greatest concern; this topic has been widely studied, and is commented on in other parts of this publication.¶ Many small countries, principally in the Caribbean, Central America, and Africa, suffer from very high skilled migration rates. Countries with greater demographic potential have larger populations of skilled people, so that even with a large share of skilled people in the migrant population, their share in the entire country’s skilled population is still small. On average, among countries with more than 30 million people, the brain drain of all tertiary educated people is about 5%. The largest states, such as China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Russia have about 3–5% of their graduates living abroad. By contrast, in sub-Saharan Africa, skilled workers only make up 4% of the total domestic workforce, but these skilled workers comprise more than 40% of people leaving the country. Beine, Docquier, and Rapaport, using recent US data on migration rates by education levels relating 150 countries, found that most countries combining low levels of human capital and low migration rates of skilled workers tend to be positively affected by the brain drain. In contrast, the brain drain has negative growth effects in countries where the migration rate of the highly educated is above 20%, and/or where the proportion of people with higher education is above 5%. An obvious and noted regularity is that countries with higher GDP per capita have lower skilled migration rates.

Impacts: Brain Drain k Competitiveness

Reducing the brain drain is key to Mexican Competitiveness

Arenas 12 – Journalist for the Nebraska Mosaic (Gabriel Medina, “Flip side of Mexican Immigration: Brain Drain”, Nebraska Mosaic, 4/20/2012, http://cojmc.unl.edu/mosaic/2012/04/20/1642)//BD
“The problem is very serious,” said Alejandro Diaz-Bautista, an economics professor at Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana, Mexico, and an expert in immigration and economics integration between Mexico and the United States. “This brain drain in developing countries like Mexico is an obstacle for economic growth, modernization and the improvement of quality of life.”¶ Diaz-Bautista said the brain drain is one reason the Mexican economy can’t compete with those of the U.S., Europe

Impacts: Mexico Econ

Brain drain hurts economies – loss of growth, use of government finances, doesn’t provide jobs to residents

Abdelbaki 09 - associate professor of Economics at the University of Bahrain (Hisham, “Estimation of the Economic Impact of Brain Drain on the Labor Expelling Country”, International Business & Economics Research Journal, December 2009, http://journals.cluteonline.com/index.php/IBER/article/view/3197)//BD

The emigration of human resources leads to many losses for the labor expelling country. Such losses would, without doubt, adversely affect the economic and social development programs in multiple aspects including state loss of migrants efforts in producing the desired growth whether in the planning and preparation stages or in the implementation stage and the cost opportunity represented in the financial resources spent on the migrants prior to their emigration which could have been utilized in other areas taking into account, the limited financial resources in the underdeveloped countries which are mainly labor expelling countries. Hence, the loss of such countries is doubled. They neither benefited from their labor after years of spending in education and health, nor they saved their funds and exploited in other alternatives like improving education and health services, providing job opportunities for residents, improving the innovation climate or even increasing civil production to improve the living standards of individuals. The study is devoted to analyze and measure of economic effects of labor emigration in the labor expelling economy, through taking Egypt – the largest Arab country suffering from this phenomenon- as an example and using data derived from Egyptian sources. Estimates have emphasized growing losses generated by the Egyptian labor emigration, especially by brain drain. The paper concludes that measures and policies must be adopted to stop this drain by addressing the causes of labor emigration or rather, the existing properties of the labor expelling country. Also, efforts must be made to ensure that data related to immigration is always available, updated and estimated by official bodies having human, financial and technical capabilities for this task.

Impacts: Mexico Econ

Lack of regulations lead to brain waste and destroys the economy – creates a cycle of economic decline

Capdevila 06 – Reporter for the Inter Press Service (Gustavo, “Health: Brain Drain Hits Poor Countries Hard”, Inter Press Service News Agency, 3/23/2006, http://www.ipsnews.net/2006/03/health-brain-drain-hits-poor-countries-hard/)//BD

“But there are also considerable concerns about the economic, social and health situation in the poorest countries,” she added.¶ Grondin also emphasised that migration of health workers is a global phenomenon, and is no longer “just a South-North issue.” Today migration can be North-North, as with Spanish nurses recruited in France; South-South, with doctors heading to South Africa from neighbouring countries like Kenya; or East-West, as large numbers of Polish nurses emigrate to the U.K., she explained.¶ Moreover, the loss of health professionals is not solely due to the international mobility of health professionals, but also to internal migration, because in many countries – both developed and developing – health workers move from rural to urban areas. “This internal migration compounds the drain brain effect of international migration and contributes to inequities in access to healthcare within countries,” said Grondin.¶ “Another type of loss associated with migration is what we call brain waste, which is associated with the cross-industry migration of qualified healthcare professionals who leave to work in non-health-related occupations,” she added.¶ This “brain waste” is frequently the result of stringent licensing regulations in many of the developed countries, she noted, which means that migrant health professionals in countries like Canada and the U.K. are unable to put their skills to use by exercising their professions.¶ In the meantime, there has also been a growing movement of patients to foreign countries for diagnosis and treatment, driven by differences in cost, the availability of quality specialised treatment, and the absence of waiting lists. This movement is facilitated by the increased portability of health insurance and by linguistic, cultural and geographic proximity, as in the case of patients from Bangladesh going to Thailand for treatment, said Grondin.¶ As a means of curbing the brain drain represented by the flow of health professionals from the developing to the developed countries, some experts recommend improving remuneration and working conditions in their countries of origin. As far as Kimani is concerned, however, this supposed solution is “paradoxical.”¶ “When you take the most important resources from a poor country, you destabilise the poor country and make it very difficult to improve conditions, because to improve conditions you also require the brains which have left that country. That makes it difficult to improve the reasons or the causes of migration, and it becomes a vicious circle,” he maintained.¶ A potential solution would be for the developed countries that benefit from the migration of health professionals to compensate the developing countries with the funds and resources that were used to educate them, suggested Kimani.¶ He also proposed that health professionals who have been recruited from developed countries could remit money back to their country of origin as a form of tax that could be used to finance development programmes.¶ “When one is educated by taxpayers’ money and then disappears from his country, he no longer pays tax, and therefore he no longer contributes to the welfare of the rest of the society,” he said.¶ For his part, however, Ziba opposed this strategy, because it would entail double taxation.¶ In the meantime, there seem to be few prospects for alleviating the growing problem of health workers from the South migrating towards the industrialised nations.¶ The United States Department of Labour has acknowledged that the country is currently facing a shortage of 125,000 nurses, and this figure could rise to as high as a million in ten years.¶ And Canada has predicted that its shortage of nurses will reach 195,000 in the year 2011 and 282,500 in 2016

Impacts: Mexico Econ (AT: Adv CPs)

Eliminating brain drain key – improve economy without human capital is impossible

Sriskandarajah 05 – Deputy director for the Institute for Public Policy Research (Dhananjayan, “Reassessing the Impacts of Brain Drain on Developing Countries”, Insitute for Public Policy Research, August 2005, http://www.migrationinformation.org/feature/display.cfm?ID=324)//BD

More than a decade ago, US presidential candidate Ross Perot talked about the "giant sucking sound" made as American jobs went south of the border. These days, there is a far more significant sucking sound, one that concerns the whole world and one that could impede collective efforts to make poverty history. That new sucking sound is being made by highly skilled people leaving developing countries and heading to the developed world. ¶ The scale of this "brain drain" is staggering. As demographer B. Lindsay Lowell and geographers Allan Findlay and Emma Stewart point out in their research, nearly one in 10 tertiary-educated adults (those with some university or post-secondary schooling) born in the developing world — between a third and half of the developing world's science and technology personnel — now live in the developed world. With demand for skilled workers in the developed world unlikely to diminish soon, that sucking sound is likely to get louder. ¶ The implications for poor sending countries are stark. According to the African Capacity Building Foundation, African countries lose 20,000 skilled personnel to the developed world every year. All the developed world's efforts to increase aid to these countries may not matter if the local personnel required to implement development programs are absent. Every year there are 20,000 fewer people in Africa to deliver key public services, drive economic growth, and articulate calls for greater democracy and development. ¶ That something needs to be done about brain drain is not in question. G8 leaders have discussed the issue, the UK's Commission on Africa calls for better responses, and unions, development agencies, and other civil-society groups are demanding action. ¶ The key question is what should be done. The intuitive response — and one that is most frequently aired — is to try to plug the drain. Stemming the flows seems to make sense: the departure of these key workers hurts the sending countries, so reducing the scale of emigration should ease the pain. ¶ However, seeking to limit mobility may not be the most efficient or humane way to tackle the problem. Indeed, the very notion of "brain drain" may be outdated and simplistic, wrongly implying that the impacts of the movement of highly skilled people are always and everywhere a bad thing. ¶ Instead, what is needed are better methodologies to assess the net impacts of migration — including but not limited to the impacts of brain drain — as well as more nuanced policies that target particular problems where and when they arise. One-size-fits-all measures aimed at limiting mobility from particular regions or countries could end up inhibiting development, not to mention curbing the rights of would-be migrants. ¶

Impacts: Mexican Econ

Brain drain halts economic growth

Millan 11 (Omar, correspondent for San Diego Red, “Mexico’s Brain Drain to the U.S., ‘A Phenomenal Loss,’” 12/13/2011, http://www.sandiegored.com/noticias/21150/Mexico-s-brain-drain-to-U-S-a-phenomenal-loss/, AC)

TIJUANA – The brain drain and flight of human capital of Mexicans who immigrate north is the equivalent of transferring $6 billion annually to the United States, about .5 per cent of that country’s GNP, said a leading researcher.¶ Alejandro Díaz Bautista, a member of Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology and an economics professor at the College of the Northern Border, said that the number of Mexican professionals living abroad in the last few years grew by 153 per cent, from 411,000 to 1.3 million.¶ This exodus constitutes “a phenomenal economic loss for Mexico” in the last six years, he said.¶ The investment made developing that capacity is lost, as is the possibility that these professionals’ work will contribute to Mexico’s development and economic growth, he said.¶ This migration involves talented people already educated, such as scientists, who move from Mexico to the United States or other developed countries.¶ Their departure is principally driven by the lack of opportunities, by the search for better salaries, and for greater security and a better standard of life.¶ “In today’s knowledge-based world, it’s more valuable to have these minds who can contribute to economic development than to take away the product of a gold mine or a part of a country’s oil,” Díaz Bautista said.¶ In the last few years, it’s estimated that more than five million Mexicans with an education above high school have decided to move to the United States, which shows that the programs to bring them back home have failed.¶ Developing countries such as Mexico need a public policy that tries to retain its qualified professionals by offering them better employment options and incentives to those who have left to return home to contribute to their country’s economy, he said.¶ He said that Mexico has generated 8 million professionals in the last few years, and that 900,000 of them are already in the United States. He said that at least 125,000 people with a master’s or doctorates have left the country.¶ Among the Latin American countries, Mexico’s suffers the most from this brain drain. He said that loss will have grave consequences for years to come.

Impacts: Mexican Econ

Brain drain undermines economic development

Corchado 8 (Alfredo Corchado, “Mexico: An Exodus of Brainpower,” The Dallas Morning News, 11/05/2008, http://www.sfnewmexican.com/World%20News/An-exodus-of-brainpower---Alarm--in-Mexico-as-many-well-educate#.UfgUKo21GpA, AC)
DALLAS — For years, Mexico's relatively weak economy has pushed thousands of low-wage workers toward the United States. Now, worries about Mexico's long-term direction are pushing highly educated workers on the same path. ¶ The brain drain threatens Mexico's prosperity, but it is creating more jobs in places such as Dallas. ¶ "We're permanently losing our best minds and best hands from both the countryside and the urban centers," said Rodolfo Tuirán, Mexico's education undersecretary and a demographic expert. "These people represent a tremendous potential for Mexico's future economic development. Their migration needs to be reversed, or Mexico risks its future." ¶ Juan G. Rolon is part of the exodus. ¶ Living in a place like Dallas never crossed his mind as he was growing up, Rolon said. But after attending an elite Mexican university, he was recruited by a Delaware-based software firm. ¶ Today, a new U.S. citizen and homeowner, he's creating jobs for north Texans as a partner in a Dallas high-tech company formed with former classmates from Mexico. He has no intention of returning to Mexico anytime soon. "I guess you can say that in some way, we're giving up on Mexico," he said. ¶ Today's Mexican immigrants come increasingly from college campuses, including Rolon's alma mater, the prestigious Tech de Monterrey, known as Mexico's MIT. ¶ Many of these well-educated immigrants say they're exiling themselves from a country that has failed to close the income and opportunity gap with its wealthy northern neighbor or provide basic security to its population. ¶ The scale of the current brain drain has not been seen since the 1982-86 economic crisis in Mexico, according to U.S. and Mexican studies. ¶ An estimated 14,000 of the 19,000 Mexicans with doctorates live in the U.S., according to the International Organization for Migration, part of a Swiss-based organization that studied the exodus of educated Mexicans to the United States, and the office of Mexico's undersecretary of education.

Impacts: Econ Generic

Brain drain causes economic instability – especially in developing economies

Saravia et al 2004 (Nancy Gore Saravia, Professor (Adjunct) of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) at the Yale School of Medicine. “Plumbing the Brain Drain,” August 2004, http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/82/8/608.pdf, AC)
The impact of the loss of highly skilled and well-educated individuals differs for countries with different sized economies (17). Medium-sized economies in particular may be the most vulnerable since migration can subvert the possibility of achieving a critical mass of capacity to produce and innovate efficiently (17). Many of these countries have made significant investments in infrastructure and education but have not achieved the scientific development and technological and innovative capability either to retain or to recover the human capital that they have generated. This raises the question of whether it is justified to continue losing human capital or to make the additional investment in science and technology and bring about the innovations needed to stop the loss and convert it into wealth generation. Although every country, irrespective of size, must be able to use knowledge to compete in international markets, smaller economies may lack the market or population size to make the acquisition of certain skills profitable; they may thus be less affected by emigration (17). On the other hand, large economies may have the diversity of human resources and educational infrastructure to overcome losses resulting from emigration. Nevertheless, the qualitative characteristics of the individuals (creativity, vision, high tolerance for risk) and the population lost through emigration can critically limit specific capabilities that are not readily compensated for either by other endogenously trained individuals or the influx of immigrants.

Neg – Cant Solve Brain Drain

Alt causes to Mexican brain drain – lack of security, democracy, open economy, high income jobs, high US demand

Torres and Wittchen 09 – Researchers at Adam Mickiewicz University working on Erasmus Mundus projects (Mario Alberto and Urszula, “Brain Drain across the Globe: Country Case Studies”, Mundus project, 2009, http://pre.docdat.com/docs/index-114593.html)//BD
The number of Mexican immigrants leaving college campuses increases, including the alumni of prestigious Monterrey Institute of Technology, known as “Mexico’s MIT”. The press claims that well-educated immigrants exile themselves from a country that has failed to lower the income and opportunity gap between it and its wealthy northern neighbour, or provide basic security for its population (Corchado, 2008). According to the International Organization for Migration, which studied the exodus of educated Mexicans to the United States, an estimated 14,000 of the 19,000 Mexicans with doctorates live in the US, many in north Texas. The number of Mexicans making leaving for the United States recently doubled in 2005 - from 275,000 emigrating annually ten years ago, to an estimated 500,000 a year nowadays - and this trend continues. Nearly half of them are specialists or professionals, who immigrate legally through special work visas. The Mexican government makes efforts to strengthening ties with Mexican expatriates, as part of the Mexicans Abroad Program, and the new Red de Talentos (Network of Talents), which targets Mexican entrepreneurs. The idea is to encourage investment in Mexico to create jobs there, and maybe to bring some of them back. But there are also mental barriers, difficult to surmount. A good exemplification of the growing unwillingness and rising difficulties with making the decision to return among migrants who have successfully spent a long time abroad can be found in the words of the Mexican potential expat in the US, who first “believed that if only there were a true democracy in Mexico, if only there were a more open economy, if only Mexico were more closely linked to the United States through a free trade agreement, if only there were more jobs and no peso crises - then Mexican workers would stay home to raise their families and build their country rather than making the journey to the US”. But now, when many of these expectations have become a reality, the old “if onlys” have been replaced by new ones: “If only jobs in Mexico paid better, if only free trade brought more benefits, if only the political parties weren’t always fighting, if only there weren’t so many drug killings. And if only there wasn’t such a demand in the United States for young, ambitious students like them” (Corchado, 2008).