Mobilizing Talent for Global Development

Transcript

NEIL RUIZ:  Migration is a very hot and deeply contested topic. If you frequently watch CNN on primetime with Lou Dobbs and also the politics surrounding the last attempt at immigration reform in the United States, you cannot avoid the large focus on the negative aspects of immigration. In the U.S. as well as other OECD countries, it is easy for policymakers to get caught into a web of creating policies to restrict the movement of people into their countries. For developing countries, there has been a large focus on the negative aspects of migration in particular around the brain drain and human capital losses as a result of high-skilled migrants such as doctors and nurses leaving their countries for the developed world.

Today's discussion will take a fresh look at the more positive aspects of migration. As some of you already know, one of the most easily measurable positive aspects of migration has been the focus on the estimated $300 billion sent by migrants worldwide. But there are other types of international transfers that migrants bring about that have a big impact on their countries of origin as well as in migrant destination countries. The flow of people's talent, knowledge, skills, and networks, something that is a little bit more challenging to measure, is the focus of today's discussion. This many policy implications in destination countries as we have seen with Bill Gates of Microsoft lobbying Congress to increase the H1B program in the United States, as well as in developing countries where there have been attempts to figure out strategies for replenishing or getting compensated for the human capital losses or finding ways of leveraging their large diasporas abroad for local development.

The main focus today will be a book edited by Andres Solimano titled "The International Mobility of Talent Types, Causes, and Development Impact." This book is an attempt to fill this gap. The focus of the book is understanding the determinants and development impact of talent mobility and also how there is much to gain with the global economy if it is effectively managed.

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