Date: June 17th 2016

Participants (from 10 countries)

Host: Rick

Co-Host: Johny

Teams

Panel PRO (Team A): Djamila, George, Heytham, Ayisha

Panel CON (Team B): Amin, Henieh, Soso.

Audience (Team C): Johny, Behnam, Mario, Noorola, Elham

Just listening: Adnan, Dayilght, Yesser.

Late: Mohiuddin.

Team A summary:

Isolated and rural areas do not offer many economic opportunities for people, therefore they will often want to migrate to another country.
People have both personal and professional growth by traveling to another country, therefore improving their lives.
There are some countries that are less developed and offer fewer technological advances hence people look for prosperity in a more developed country.
People who studied in Africa and completed their studies in the USA may have never been as successful as there are today if they wouldn’t have migrated to the west.
The westerner countries often offer more education and post education internships/job opportunities.
Many people that are educated do not see the opportunities in their native country, they do not see social or economic stability, or freedom to live the life of their choice, so they will often immigrant to those countries which high skilled immigrants are in demand.
If native countries provided more incentives to their skilled labor force, they would return back to their native country after studies.
In many western countries, there are medical, engineering and other high tech/skilled opportunities, both to continue higher education studies and to set up their futures.

Team B summary:

When people migrate to another country looking for better opportunities, the native country is left with fewer capable, educated and skillful people.
Brain drain negatively affects the native country economically: The investment made through education decreases in the native country when people prefer to go and do business in another country.
It depends on the loyalty towards the native country people have. If people are loyal, they will come back.
It is good for the country which receives the immigrants only when the country is a developed country because they will then have the new resources (the people).
It is good that people go look for a better future but they should not forget their native countries.
There is a vicious cycle that occurs, educated people will travel abroad, taking their expertise with them, and there is a trickle down effect to society.
There is a significant impact to infrastructure if the skilled labor force, whether engineers, medical specialist, architectures etc, go abroad.
Human capital is the most important resource any country can have, so the flight of human capital can devastate a country's economy.
Countries need to look at the global network, and understand how to be competitive in a global economy, meaning they have to provide opportunity to their citizens.

Team C summary:

There is a natural need to discover the world and other cultures. People tend to go for their personal interests more often than caring about what the country needs. Especially when the native country does not offer much to its people.
In order to identify whether there are more advantages than disadvantages for the person, we just need to look at whether the person was able to be successful or not in each country.
For the native country, is like having a tree with fruits. It is not good for the tree if people come and eat all the fruit.
Brain drain is a loss of valuable human resources with high costs to replace. If a country loses physicians or scientists, who will replace them to do their jobs? Training to become a medical doctor or astronomer takes years of training at a high financial cost.
Losing trained and experienced scientists can take years to replace them. If the government pays part or all of their expenses it is money that is lost and must be paid for again when new people are trained.

Votes:

Team A won this debate. Thanks everyone for participating. Below are the links to listen to this discussion.

Listen Online:

Download:
Google Drive | Dropbox