Further proof of how migration helps economic development

By Brian Micklethwait | 15 September 2005

I haven't read Flight Capital: The Alarming Exodus of America's Best and Brightest, but I have just read this product description of it:

The best and brightest in America are returning to their homelands in record numbers-and with them is going U.S. technological and economic preeminence. In Flight Capital, we explore this exodus through the personal stories of dozens of successful, foreign-born professionals who are leaving America for opportunities in their native lands. Drawing on their experiences, Heenan analyzes the economic, cultural, and political factors that are driving this flight, as well as the initiatives that countries are using to attract top talent.

Thanks to Instapundit for the link, and also for giving us this emailed response from Jonathan Gewirtz, who says:

The phenomenon of non-US students returning to their countries of origin is alarming only if it is mainly a function of problems in the USA. If it mainly reflects, instead, improving opportunities in other countries, it is great news.

Indeed, as Instapundit would say. Some people can find bad news in anything.

Most of us here would say, with Gewirtz, that this is great. It is surely a result of such things as the globalization of higher education, especially of higher education in the USA, of ever easier international travel and communication, and of the fact that lots of other countries besides the USA are now, exactly as the USA always says it wants, developing, modernizing and globalizing rapidly. People come to the USA, learn good and useful stuff, take it back home. Where's the problem?

In a world that is making rapid economic and social progress, the relative preeminence of the USA is bound to recede. The only problem here is thinking of national success as something that can only continue if other nations continue to fail.