Thursday, March 08, 2012

Brain gain in Brazil

A country undergoes an economic boom and discovers it has a labor shortage even for high skilled jobs that needs to be addressed through immigration. This gets tricky because the government wants to be sure that foreign workers do not take jobs that a citizen could fill. At the same time, that economic growth is attracting undocumented workers, prompting new efforts to fight smugglers at the border. Overall, last year the foreign born population grew by 50 percent.

Sounds a bit like the U.S. in the 1990s, but actually refers to Brazil today.

One interesting tidbit was the suggestion that Brazil's participation in MINUSTAH has led to an increase in Haitian immigration. Under what circumstances does participation in peacekeeping operations connect countries through migration?

3 comments:

Miguel Centellas 9:14 AM  

Nice post. I reposted it to my Tumblr account, and added some comments on Brazil's policies to attract MERCOSUR residents. Basically, citizens of any MERCOSUR country (plus also Chile and Brazil) can move to Brazil and qualify for two-year residency almost automatically; after two years, they qualify for permanent residency.

http://pol102.tumblr.com/post/19001409167/brain-gain-in-brazil-two-weeks-notice

Greg Weeks 3:17 PM  

Notable how immigration is lacking in US agreements with other countries.

Randy Paul 7:24 PM  

Higher education in Brazil is a mess. To begin with, the best universities are the state and federal universities, but no tuition costs are charged regardless of the means of the student and their family.

In addition, admissions are effectively controlled by a test system called Vestibular, for which there is an extensive industry of preparation centers that charge a hefty fee. Thus, those with significant means, whose children attended private schools can then spend money for prep courses to help their kid's test scores to get into universities where they pay nothing.

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