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Castro accuses rich countries of "stealing brains"

14:01 H | Topics: Cuba - Labor - Latin America - Society - World

Cuban president Fidel Castro is accusing rich countries like the U.S. of "stealing brains". No, it's not Invasion of the Body Snatchers; he's referring to the mass exodus of intellectuals from Latin America and Africa to the U.S. and Europe -- a brain drain, as it were. Fidel charges:

In the last 40 years, more than 1.2 million professionals from Latin America and the Caribbean have emigrated to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. An average of 70 scientists a day has emigrated from Latin America in the course of 40 years.

Of the 150 million people around the world involved in science and technology activities, 90 percent is concentrated in the seven most industrialized nations.

Castro points to students studying abroad in countries like the U.S. and the U.K. as the "precursor" to the intellectual exodus, and fingers the U.S. for incenting international workers by making H1-B visas more easy to obtain. I think many a foreign worker would beg to differ on that point.

A number of countries, particularly small nations in Africa, the Caribbean and Central America, have lost over 30 percent of their population with higher education as a result of migration.

The Caribbean islands, where nearly all nations are English-speaking, report the world"s highest brain drain. In some of these islands, 8 of every 10 university graduates have left their native countries.

More than 70 percent of software programmers employed by the US Company Microsoft Corporation are from India and Latin America.

With regard to the migration of scientists, Castro calls the phenomenon of "the South countries" being left without them "scientific apartheid". Though he says its an issue worthy of a state of emergency, just how Castro thinks this should be handled is unclear.

Via / El Universal (Venezuela)

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