The most industrialized countries in the world need to import computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, biologists and engineers. Germany changed its legislation to provide residence permits to 20,000 foreigners that were experts on computer science. The big centers of informational revolution in the United States -Seattle, Silicon Valley, New York and Washington- have opened their doors to foreign talents that substitute the deficit of well-prepared domestic university students.
Many of those students of Asian or African origin had been trained in the United States and they were given special treatment to process their residence. But many others are being recruited abroad in universities of their country of origin. This causes a true brain drain in countries that desperately need them for their incorporation into the new global and communication society. These efforts are based on scholarships offered by large corporations such as Microsoft, AOL, AT&T, Bell, Oracle or Yahoo, whose high technology demands a non-stop renovation in their ranks that many Chinese, Pakistanis, Indians, Philipinos, Koreans, Indonesians or Malaysians fill. There is no racial discrimination for these well-prepared youngsters.
Five-year permits are granted to squeeze as much possible the innovation capacity that tends to be present between the twenty and thirty years of age. Those who integrate themselves in the system are granted a permanent citizenship so that they develop those breakthrough ideas that characterize young people and emerging societies.
France, Great Britain, Holland and Belgium attract university students that will fill the demographic decline and the need for maintaining the intellectual quality of their students in societies mined by consumerism.
Technological revolution produces a new world in which knowledge is not enough and where a new intellectual attitude that promotes innovation, sparks creativity and develops personal initiative is needed.
Some years ago, the U.S. Administration has proposed an increase of 200,000 visas for qualified foreigners, the so-called H-1B for those students who had degrees related to science and technology.
It’s scandalous that developed countries pretend to aid emerging countries in their “development” by shipping their production surpluses, which produce unbearable “foreign debts”. All this takes place while they go hunting after young talents that are indispensable for the inner growth of their countries.
Along with arms sales and the price imposition for their raw materials, the theft of their best-prepared youngsters obeys the “sacred” market laws. One should follow atheism rather than a religion that places the economy before human rights.

José Carlos García Fajardo
Profesor of Contemporary Social and Political Thought. CCS Director
Translated by Carlos Miguélez
ccs@solidarios.org.es