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The Middle East and the United States: A Problem of “Brain Drain”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Hossein G. Askari  and
John Thomas Cummings
Hossein G. Askari
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
John Thomas Cummings
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
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Extract

In explaining the determinants of economic growth, economists have attempted to distinguish the relative contributions made by various inputs. Theodore Schultz concluded that improvements in human capital have made larger contributions to growth than increases in physical capital. E. F. Denison was even more specific in his pioneering studies of changes in real national income in the United States from 1927 to 1967, estimating that 23 percent of the growth could be explained by improvements in the educational level of the labor force and 20 percent by advances in technological and managerial knowledge. On the basis of such results, we may conclude that expenditures on education and training, public health, and general research contribute significantly to productivity in the industrialized nations by raising the quality of human capital; thus these outlays command a continuing return in the future.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , January 1977 , pp. 65 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 Schultz, T. W., “Investment in Human Capital,” American Economic Review, 51 (03 1961), 1–17.Google Scholar

2 Denison, E. F., The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States, Supplementary paper No. 13, Committee for Economic Development, New York, 1962Google Scholar; and idem, ”Education, Economic Growth, and Gaps in Information,” Journal of Political Economy, 70 (10 1962).Google Scholar

3 Various estimates place the trade surplus of the oil-exporting nations of the Middle East at between $25 and $40 billion annually for the next five to ten years.

4 Previous studies of this problem in the Middle East are limited. There are reports for Lebanon, and Iran, in The International Migration of High-Level Manpower (New York: Committee for the International Migration of Talent, 1970)Google Scholar; and another study of Lebanon is summarized in The Brain Drain from Five Developing Countries (New York: United Nations Institute for Training and Research [UNITAR], 1971).Google Scholar Our investigation here focuses on migration to the United States as an example for which a fair degree of data is available and not because the United States is assumed to be the goal of a majority or even a plurality of the migrants. By way of partial comparison, Australia received about 29,900 migrants from Lebanon and 21,700 from Egypt between 1955 and 1973: these individuals had the status at entry of “permanent arrivals,” closely equivalent to that of immigrant in the United States. About 14,700 Egyptians and 0,300 Lebanese migrated to Canada between 1960 and 1971; over 7,000 former Egyptians and 3,000 former Lebanese acquired Canadian citizenship during the same period. In the United Kingdom, the number of registered aliens grew by nearly 47 percent between 1961 and 1973 to a total of nearly 184,000. In 1973, nearly 4,000 of these aliens were Iranians, up by almost 216 percent in 12 years, while the number of Egyptians had swelled to more than 3.500, an increase of more than 153 percent. The Iraqi population in Britain has grown more slowly—by about 28 percent—to about 3,200.

5 Over 9 million since 1907.

6 The exchange visitor category, as far as Middle Eastern visitors are concerned, comprise mostly visitors with some kind of nondegree training.

7 Among all professional people migrating to the United States between 1967 and 1969, engineers, teachers, and doctors comprised about 44 percent; nurses and others in medical fields made up another 18 percent, compared with about 7 percent from the Middle East. About 25, 15, and 7 percent of all student status changers were engineers, teachers, and natural scientists respectively.

8 Haug, J. N. and Martin, B. C.Foreign Medical Graduates in the United States (Chicago, 1971).Google Scholar

9 At the time of the study, medical schools were found in only five of the countries concerned here: Egypt (Alexandria, Ain Shams, Ibrahim Pasha, and Cairo Universities), Iran (Teheran University and the Medical Faculties at Ahwaz, Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, and Tabriz), Iraq (Baghdad University), Lebanon (American University of Beirut and St. Joseph's University), and Syria (Damascus University). Only in Lebanon did the schools train significant numbers of medical students from other countries; in Lebanon, most of the foreign students were from neighboring Arab countries that lacked medical faculties.

10 Where the number of physicians per 10,000 population was about 14.8 in 1969.

11 It is not possible to present meaningful figures of the proportion of the students who become permanent residents as a result of the time lag. The Immigration and Naturalization Service presents annual statistics for the (first) entry of foreign students into the United States and for adjustments from student to permanent resident status. Such adjustments occur over many years following initial entry (table 8), and student entries from the Middle East have increased sharply in recent years (table 2).

12 The Institute of International Education compiles its annual census of foreign students by surveying all American universities, colleges, and other institutions of higher learning. Historically, the returns from these surveys have been very high, missing few schools with significant numbers of foreign students. The increasing use of computers by schools in their registration processes in recent years has led to serious problems for the I.I.E. census. Few registration cards ask all the same questions of foreign students as does I.I.E.; hence a growing proportion of the “no answer” category appearing in the resultant statistics. In the major areas of concern (country of origin, sex, academic level and field of study) the response level has been fairly steady in recent years. For other series of some interest here, this rising degree of inaccuracy is unfortunate. For example, the query concerning the first year of each student's matriculation in the United States yielded, until the late 19605, relatively accurate cumulative data as to the number of students from each country who had ever come to the United States (see n. 18).

13 Especially when dependents are eliminated from the calculations.

14 This assumption is substantiated by claims made in the answers to inquiries put by the authors to the U.S. embassies of several of these nations.

15 For example, many student emigrants from Iran and Iraq—also major oil producers— for various reasons have eventually adjusted their student status to that of permanent U.S. resident

16 Recent population estimates (1975) are: Egypt, 37.1 million; Iran, 33.5 million; Iraq, 10.6 million; Saudi Arabia, 8.5 million; Syria, 7.0 million; Lebanon, 3.2 million; Jordan, 2.7 million; Libya, 2.3 million; and Kuwait, 1.0 million.

17 Most studies on the brain-drain problem agree that a major source of the emigration of professionally trained personnel are individuals who, after being educated abroad, return home and subsequently find themselves unsatisfied, and then apply for immigrant visas to their countries of study or elsewhere. We have here no such data and it may be a serious limitation.

18 Comparison of official immigration data with the census results compiled by I.I.E. yields the following estimates for students coming to the United States in the last twenty years:

Iran 30–35,000 Syria 2,800 Lebanon 8,000 Libya 1,600 Jordan 6,000 Kuwait 1,250 Egypt 5,000 Gulf States 200 Iraq 4,200 Yemen 100 Saudi Arabia 3,250 S. Yemen 100 The large proportion of Iranians who are nonpermanent resident aliens (i.e., mostly students) in the United States (table 4) is indicative of Iran's lead in this category.

19 Migration to the United States or to Europe is only a small factor in this regard. In The Brain Drain from Five Developing Countries (New York, 1971)Google Scholar, A. B. Fahlan estimates that emigration from Lebanon in the late 19605 amounted annually to about 1,000 each to the United States and Canada, 3,000 to 4,000 to other non-Arab countries (particularly to Australia, France, and Latin America), and 4,000 to 5,000 to Arab countries.

20 Jordanian-Palestinians form a third category. Despite a recent increase in higher education facilities at home, large numbers still attend universities elsewhere—mostly in the Middle East, but also overseas. Employment opportunities for graduates in Jordan (including the west bank) are no more attractive than in Egypt; students outside the country have great incentive to look elsewhere for jobs. An analogous situation prevails generally for Palestinians; although a majority of them have had claim to Jordanian passports, 30 to 40 percent are domiciled permanently, usually stateless, elsewhere in the Middle East. Statistics are hard to come by, but Palestinians are held to be one of the world's best educated peoples in the Middle East, rivals in this way, as in so many others, only with the Israelis. Yet their lack of a homeland has tended to limit both the wherewithal to finance overseas education and the potentiality for attractive employment after university in their places of residence. In our context here, the relevant circumstance is one of education in the Middle East, generally in Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria, and émigré status later. Palestinians have been vital to the economies of the oil-rich and talent-short states along the gulf, as well as in Saudi Arabia; in smaller numbers, they have opted for America, Europe or Australia.

21 Census Bureau, U.S. Dept. of Commerce, in Public Use Sample-1970 Census, gives detailed social and economic characteristics of the foreign-born population, but figures extracted from the general population survey are available only for those countries whose expatriates numbered 300,000 or more. Only rough estimates are available (without high cost special analysis) for other countries and these are further limited by the validity applicable to the 5 and 15 percent samples employed. Given these qualifications, estimates are available for Lebanon, Iran, and Syria, and they are subject to degrees of error abnormally above desirable levels because of rounding problems. These estimates pertain to populations of about 24,000, 22,000, and 13,000 Lebanese, Iranians, and Syrians, respectively.

22 Alternatively, a contracted lump-sum bonus could be paid in guaranteed annual installments relative to the terms of an initial contract.

23 Immigrant Scientists and Engineers in the United States: A Study of Characteristics and Attitudes (Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 1973).Google Scholar This study involved a sample of nearly 8,000 migrants who came to the United States between 1964 and 1969, about 14 percent of the total population in this category; this survey was not random, since it focused on those who resided in the northeast and in northern California. About 4.2 percent of those surveyed were born in the Middle East; their general characteristics are indicated in table 17.

24 For example, 59.5 percent of all those surveyed said that hopes for a higher standard of living were important in their migration decisions. Of those surveyed, 35.5 percent expected to improve opportunities for their children and 33.5 percent complained that otherwise satisfactory jobs at home were too low paying.

25 While nonemployment factors are also crucial, they are not really within the realm of potential solutions that can be realized through economic policy. For example, the preference indicated for the social and political systems of the new country of residence is obviously of major importance.

26 Egyptians surveyed had generally been more advanced in professional status and experience upon their arrival in the United States, while most Iranians had not worked in their chosen fields at home, as can be gathered from earlier data and table 17.

27 Attributable to any one (or more) of a myriad of methods traditionally employed to block migration of various groups (such as currency export restrictions or refusal of exit visas to individuals still technically subject to military conscription) or to difficulty in re-obtaining an American or European visa.

28 Another consideration in this regard concerns the small but rapidly growing number of Middle Easterners who become naturalized U.S. citizens, a process occurring in Canada, Australia, and elsewhere (see n. 4). Some countries, including several in the Middle East, do not recognize the acquired nationalities of their natives (e.g., Iran). Others recognize a dual nationality (e.g., Lebanon), but this often means a definite legal precedence for the original citizenship. Individuals with such a status can often return home, but only at some risk; for example, the U.S. government warns its naturalized citizens that they may face military obligations in their native countries and that U.S. embassy officials in those countries can do little or nothing to protect them from the consequences of even a brief visit, let alone an extended stay. If the Iranian government recognized the American passports of former Iranians, and treated them like any other American visitors, they might actually attract home more professionally trained native sons and daughters. Dual-citizenship provisions, as long as they recognize the current intention of the involved individuals, might also help in the long-term prospects for recruiting first-generation Americans and Canadians (and others) for jobs in the Middle East. Such individuals often inherit Arab or Iranian citizenship by virtue of parentage, yet by birth, law, and upbringing they are North Americans, Australians, or Europeans, a basic status they usually prefer to retain under all temporary employment circumstances.

29 Health insurance and pension annuities are available in reliable markets. The problem of educating children might be solved through allowances for tuition charges in suitable schools, at least a short-run solution if public education is not attractive to present European or North American residents. The obvious long-run solution would be to duplicate what is found at present in the more developed economies—social security, general medical provision systems, and so on. These services have been recently initiated by most Middle East governments, but their reliability may not impress many potential returnees until their existence is of a longer duration.

30 And by implication, in other Western countries.

31 American residents from Egypt, Lebanon and other non-oil countries among those of our interest here have professional and experiential backgrounds that should be of interest to such skill-short oil producers as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

32 Or for stemming the future flow.