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I mentioned something and included a quotation
on this topic for an example I used in my last
reflection, titled "Bush, Health and Education",
which I dedicated to children. In this
reflection, aimed at the first class to graduate
from the University of Information Sciences (UCI),
I shall delve more deeply into this thorny
issue.
These graduates were the pioneers, from whom I
learned much about the intelligence and the
values our young people can cultivate when they
study assiduously. I also learned much from the
excellent staff of professors, a great many of
whom had studied at the José Antonio Echevarría
University Complex (CUJAE).
Neither can I avoid to mention the example of
the social workers, whose organizational skills
and spirit of sacrifice enriched my knowledge
and afforded me new experiences, nor the
thousands of educators who graduated recently,
who made the goal of having one teacher for
every 15 students, in the seventh, eighth and
ninth grades of our junior high schools a
reality. All of them began their university
studies almost simultaneously, infused with the
ideas which were born and were applied in the
battle to have a 6 year old child who had been
kidnapped returned to his family and homeland, a
child for whom we were willing to give our all.
In two days, 1,334 computer sciences engineers
from around the country, whose exemplary conduct
and knowledge earned them university
scholarships, shall graduate from UCI. Of these,
1,134 have been assigned to different
ministries, which provide important services to
our people, and to state agencies which manage
crucial economic resources. A centralized
reserve of 200 young and carefully selected
graduates, which shall grow larger every year,
awaits different assignments. This reserve is
made up of graduates from all of the country's
provinces who shall stay lodged at UCI
residences. A total of 56 percent are males and
44 percent females.
UCI opens its doors to young people from Cuba's
169 municipalities. It is not grounded in the
model of exclusion and competition among human
beings which developed capitalist countries
advocate.
Our world order appears to have been designed to
foster the egoism, individualism and
dehumanization of humanity.
A Reuters press dispatch published on May 3,
2006, titled “African brain drain deprives
Africa of vital talent”, reports that, in
Africa, "it is estimated that some 20,000
skilled professionals are leaving the continent
every year, depriving Africa of the doctors,
nurses, teachers and engineers it needs to break
a cycle of poverty and under-development".
Reuters adds that "the World Health Organization
(WHO) says that Sub-Saharan Africa bears 24
percent of the world's global burden of disease
including HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. To
face that challenge, it has just 3 percent of
the world’s health workers”. “In Malawi, only 5
percent of physicians' posts and 65 percent of
nursing vacancies are filled. In the country of
10 million, one doctor serves 50,000 people”.
Quoting a report from the World Bank, the
dispatch reports that, "stymied by conflict,
poverty, lethal diseases and corruption, much of
Africa is in no position to compete with richer
countries that promise higher salaries, better
working conditions and political stability”.
“Brain drain deals a double blow to weak
economies, which not only lose their best human
resources and the money spent training them, but
then have to pay an estimated $5.6 billion a
year to employ expatriates”.
The phrase “brain drain” was coined in the 1960s,
when the United States began to hoard UK
doctors. In that case, one developed country
dispossessed another; one emerged from the
Second World War in 1944 with 80 percent of the
world’s gold reserve in bullions, the other had
been severely hit and deprived of its empire in
the course of the war.
A World Bank report titled "International
migration, remittances and the brain drain",
made public in October 2005, yielded the
following results:
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.
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.
The intense migratory movements, from Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union towards
Western Europe and North America, which began
following the collapse of the socialist block,
are worthy of special mention.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) points
out that the number of scientists and engineers
who abandon their native countries and emigrate
to industrialized nations is about one third of
the number of those who stay in their native
countries, something which significantly
depletes indispensable human resource reserves.
The ILO report maintains that the migration of
students is a precursor of the brain drain. The
Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) reported that, at the
beginning of the new millennium, a bit more than
1.5 million foreign students pursued higher
studies in member states and that, of these,
more than half were from non-OECD countries. Of
this total, nearly half a million studied in the
United States, one quarter of a million in the
United Kingdom and nearly 200 thousand in
Germany.
Between 1960 and 1990, the United States and
Canada received more than one million
professional immigrants and experts from Third
World countries.
These figures are but a pale reflection of the
tragedy.
In recent years, encouraging this type of
emigration has become an official state policy
in a number of North countries, which use
incentives and procedures especially tailored to
suit this end.
The American Competitiveness in the 21st
Century Act —approved by the US Congress in
2000— increased the temporary work visa (H-1B)
allotment, from 65 thousand to 115 thousand in
the 2000 fiscal year and then to 195 thousand
for fiscal years 2001 through 2003. The aim of
this increase in the visa cap was to encourage
the entry into the United States of highly
qualified immigrants who could occupy positions
in the high-technology sector. Though this
figure was reduced to 65 thousand in the 2005
fiscal year, the flow of professionals towards
this country has remained steady.
Similar measures were promulgated by the United
Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Australia. Since
1990, this last country prioritized the intake
of highly qualified workers, primarily for
sectors such as banking, insurance and the
so-called knowledge economy.
In nearly all cases, the selection criteria are
based on the worker's high qualifications,
language proficiency, age, work experience and
professional achievements. The UK program grants
extra points to medical doctors.
This relentless plundering of brains in South
countries dismantles and weakens programs aimed
at training human capital, a resource which is
needed to rise from the depths of
underdevelopment. It is not limited to the
transfer of capital; it also entails the import
of grey matter, which nips a country's nascent
intelligence and future at the bud.
Between 1959 and 2004, Cuba has graduated 805,902
professionals, including medical doctors. The
United States' unjust policy towards our country
has deprived us of 5.16 percent of the
professionals who graduated under the
Revolution.
However, not even the elite of immigrant workers
enjoy work conditions and salaries like those of
US nationals. In order to avoid the complicated
paperwork which US labor legislation requires
and reduce the costs of immigration procedures,
the United States has gone as far as creating a
software ship-factory which keeps
highly-qualified slaves anchored in
international waters, in a kind of assembly
plant which produces all manner of digital
devices. Project SeaCode consists of a ship,
anchored more than three miles off the coast of
California (international waters), with 600
Indian computer scientists on board, who work an
uninterrupted 12 hour daily shift for four
months out at sea.
The trend towards the privatization of knowledge
and the internalization of scientific research
companies subordinated to big capital has been
creating a kind of "scientific apartheid" which
affects the vast majority of the world's
population.
The United States, Japan and Germany combined
have a percentage of the world's population
similar to that of Latin America, but their
investment in research and development is of
52.9 percent, as opposed to 1.3 percent in the
latter. Today's economic gap foreshadows what
tomorrow's may be if these trends are not
reversed.
That future is already upon us. The so-called new
economy mobilizes immense capital flows each
year. According to a 2006 report published by
Digital Planet, a World Information
Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA)
publication, the global Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) market accounted
for three trillion US dollars in 2006.
More and more people have access to the Internet
each day —in July 9, 2007, the figure was almost
1.4 billion users. However, in many countries,
including numerous developed ones, the people
with no access to this service continue to be
the majority. The digital gap spells dramatic
differences, whereby part of humanity, fortunate
and connected, has more information at its
disposal than any generation before it ever had.
To have an idea of what this means, suffice it
two compare two realities: while more than 70
percent of the population of the United States
has access to the Internet, only 3 percent of
Africa's entire population has such access.
Internet service providers are based in
high-income countries, where a mere 16 percent
of the world's population lives.
The underprivileged situation our group of
countries faces within these global information
networks, the Internet and all modern means used
to transfer information and images must urgently
be addressed.
A society in which millions of human beings are
considered superfluous, the brain drain of South
countries constitutes a common practice and
economic power and new technologies are wielded
by only a handful of nations cannot be called
human, not by a long shot. Overcoming this
dilemma is as important for the destiny of
humanity as mitigating the climate change crisis
which scourges the planet, two problems which
are completely interrelated.
To conclude, I need only add:
Whoever has a computer has all published
knowledge at their disposal and the privileged
memory of the machine belongs to them too.
Ideas are born of knowledge and ethical values.
An important part of the problem would be
technologically solved, another must be
cultivated restlessly. Otherwise, the most basic
instincts shall prevail.
The task ahead of UCI graduates is grandiose. I
hope you are able to fulfill it. I am confident
that you will.
Fidel Castro Ruz
July 17, 2007
11:05 am
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