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Prytulak   InfoUkes Posting   27-Oct-1997   Re: Brain drain: Canada & Ukraine
Date:  Mon, 27 Oct 1997 08:18:56 -0800
To:  [email protected]
From:  Lubomyr Prytulak
Subject:  Re: Brain drain: Canada & Ukraine

At 10:48 AM 10/27/1997 -0500, gjp wrote:

...  Brain drain occurs when there are high tech jobs that cannot be filled because of lack of specialists.  In Ukraine there are no such jobs and thus no brain drain.  Professional people leaving Ukraine to work in Canada and elsewhere need not only the money that comes with this move, but more importantly the ability to work with most modern technology and equipment, which is essential to maintain competence and skill.  If and when Ukraine provides well paying employment for such people, they will return to Ukraine.  Today's professionals are very mobile and the world is their home.

gjp

The above is true from the point of view of the brain him/herself.  However, what I am stressing is that the effect of such individual choice on the part of the brain who is draining is that the net flow of wealth is out of Ukraine, that this wealth is uncompensated such that in reality Ukaine is helping the West more than the West is helping Ukraine, and that Western aid funds could be allocated to preventing this loss so as to leave Ukraine enough brains to be able to rebuild its economy.  What I am particularly stressing is that large amounts of money are spent to lure brains out of Ukraine � especially to Israel � and that this enticement could be stopped, and if the West really had Ukraine's interests in mind, then the same amount of money presently being spent to lure Ukrainians out of Ukraine could be spent (as in joint ventures or lowered trade barriers) to create employment for Ukraine's brains within Ukraine.  There is nothing natural or inevitable or good about being plundered.

And what is particularly offensive about the Montreal Gazetter article cited by Roman Serbyn is that Canada is going to send a "trade mission" whose purpose is unabashedly to lure Ukraine's finest brains to Canada.  So what is going to be traded by this trade mission? � Canada gets to pick over what's left of Ukraine's brains, and in return Ukraine gets what?  Nothing, that's what!  This isn't a trade mission, it is a plundering mission.  The fact that Canada could announce this sacking foray without any awareness of the harm that will result to Ukraine astounds me.

Lubomyr Prytulak


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