时事点评：Where brain drains lead？ brain, Where, drains, lead, 点评

幽幽草

Where brain drains lead？人才究竟去了哪里？

And Canada thought it had a brain drain? Eight of every 10 Haitians and Jamaicans with college or university degrees live outside the country of their birth, the World Bank says in a new report. In five African countries, more than 50 per cent of skilled workers have left. (The figures aren't precise; they include those who emigrated as children and went on to university in their new homeland.) Now that's a brain drain
加拿大从来就认为自己有人才流失问题？世界银行一份最新报告指出，每10名接受过大专或大学教育的海地和牙买加人中就有8人不在自己的祖国居住。在五个非洲国家中，超过50%的技术工人离开自己国家。（这些数字并不精确；这些人包括了那些早年移民国外的儿童并在所移民的国家继续大学教育的人）。这才叫真正的人才流失。

Canada has no overall brain drain. Its net gain of those with postsecondary education was 2.25 million people in 2000, up from 1.5 million 10 years earlier, the World Bank says. The bank says Canada and the West are draining poor countries of their best minds. By giving hope and opportunity to individuals, this country and other rich countries deprive entire nations of those qualities. Countries fail when their institutions are weak; strong institutions need smart, trained people. "When a Humpty Dumpty falls and cracks, just who is going to put it together?" ask John McHale, a Queen's University economist, and Devesh Kapur, a development expert at the University of Texas, in their recent book Give Us Your Best and Brightest.

总体来说，加拿大并没有人才流失。世界银行称，加国2000年接受高等教育的净人数从十年前的150万增加到225万。世界银行还指出，是加拿大和西方国家将贫穷国家最优秀的人才给挖走了。通过向个人提供希望和机会，加拿大和其他富裕国家使所有贫困国家完全丧失了那些人才。当一个国家的政府和企业机构不能起作用时，这个国家就没有希望；强有力的政府和企业机构需要聪明、训练有素的人才。加拿大皇后大学的经济学家John McHale和美国德克萨斯大学的经济发展专家Devesh Kapur在他们新近出版的《Give Us Your Best and Brightest》一书中就问到：“当一个懦夫跌倒和摔伤，靠谁去帮助他？”

The question is what, if anything, rich countries should do about it. One answer, say Professors McHale and Kapur, is not to recruit doctors and nurses from poor African countries where those people are desperately needed for the fight against AIDS. That seems reasonable enough.

现在的问题是，富裕国家应该为贫穷国家做些什么？McHale教授和Kapur教授对这样的问题的回答是，不要从贫困的非洲国家招募医生和护士，因为那里的人们迫切需要他们的帮助去与艾滋病作斗争。这个回答看上去非常合理。

Other options are to bar educated people from leaving, impose exit taxes on them, make them pay taxes to their homeland once they begin earning money in their new country, and have their new country set aside a share of immigrant taxes to compensate their countries of origin. These suggestions range from the impractical to the offensive. The right to leave one's homeland is basic; the world needs no more Berlin Walls, whether of bricks or exit taxes. The idea that a Canadian citizen such as Ottawa software engineer Maher Arar would need to pay his birthplace of Syria a portion of his income earned in this country (or that Canada would have to pay part of its take from him) seems bizarre. Freedom of movement implies the right to shed obligations to the nation in which, through no fault of the migrant, he was born.

两位教授建议的其他防止人才外流的方法包括：向那些外流的人征收出国税，一但他们在新的国度里挣钱，迫使他们向自己的祖国交税，同时让接纳他们的国家拿出一部分税收来补偿培养他们的祖国。以上这些建议既不切实际，亦没有道理。选择离开自己的祖国是每个人的基本权利；不管出境的关卡是用砖砌的，还是用收税的方式建立的，当今的世界不再需要柏林墙。如果按照这种建议，渥太华软件工程师Maher Arar这样的加拿大公民就需要将他在这里所得的收入的一部分支付给他的祖国叙利亚（或者加拿大必须向叙利亚支付部分他交纳的移民税）。我们实在看不出这样的做法有何意义。行动自由意味着移民有权摆脱对祖国的义务。毕竟，出生在哪个国家不是他们自己的选择。

It is hard to see where Canada offers unfair inducements to educated people in poor countries. Immigration Minister Joseph Volpe announced pilot projects in the spring to entice more international students, but the decision to stay or return home is the student's. The streets, alas, are not paved with gold. Immigrants need to cover great distances, learn new languages and survive in a climate or social setting that may be very different from the ones they are accustomed to. Only a powerful inner need could take them that far. It is the same need -- the yearning to be free from war, or corruption, or poverty, or hopelessness -- that has driven the movement of peoples throughout history. (Roughly 175 million people now live outside the country of their birth, about twice the number of 25 years ago, but that's still only about 3 per cent of the world's population.) More and more, it is the middle classes rather than the huddled masses who are moving. But they, like the poor, have the right to build better lives for themselves and their families.

我们实在看不出加拿大用哪种不公平的方式诱惑那些在贫困国家受过教育的人来这个国家。为了吸引更多国际留学生学成后留在加拿大，联邦移民部长Joseph Volpe今年春季宣布一个非常前卫的移民项目。尽管如此，那些国际留学生们可以自己选择他们毕业后是留在加国还是回到自己的祖国。毕竟，移民并非是一条金光大道。移民需要重新适应一个新环境，学习新语言，并要在一个可能与他们的祖国截然不同的社会文化中生存。只有强烈的愿望才会使他们决定如此背井离乡。在人类历史上，同样的愿望：远离战争、腐败、贫穷、绝望等因素，让人们作出背井离乡的决定。（目前大约有1.75亿人旅居外国，几乎比25年前增加了一倍，但那仍然大约只占到世界人口的3%。）是越来越多的中产阶级，而不是不分男女老少在毫无目的移民。这些同平民一样的中产阶级，他们有权为他们自己和家人营造更美好的生活。

The First World is not feasting on the misery of the Third. It is, slowly, realizing that discriminatory barriers only hurt itself in the growing international competition for skilled labour. It is a happy coincidence that an end to discrimination is in the West's interest. But there are costs to absorbing immigrants (language training, housing, security) and benefits to countries of origin (immigrants worldwide sent back remittances of $225-billion in 2005). Educated people do not rush to leave prosperous, safe democracies in which their skills can be put to work. The loss of talent, say Professors McHale and Kapur, is a wake-up call to poorer countries. The West's obligation is to help those countries build the infrastructure they need to prosper.

第一世界并不想把自己的享乐建筑在第三世界的痛苦之上。发达国家开始发觉，在争夺全球技术劳工的竞争当中，设置歧视性的政策只会损害自己的利益。为了西方的利益，停止对技术劳工的歧视是个皆大欢喜的巧合。吸引移民也是有代价的（语言培训，安置，安全检查），而且，移民对移民输出国有益（全世界的移民在2005年给自己祖国的汇款达到2250亿美元）。受过教育的人不会轻易离开繁荣且安全的、并可以充分发挥自己的技能的民主国家。McHale和Kapur两位教授称，人才的流失是对贫困国家的一个警告。西方国家有义务帮助那些国家建造他们发展所需要的基础设施