Against the flight/drain of hearts

Regardless of how much is said about how the brain-drain (flight of brains) can negatively affect developing countries, which have a high level of emigration, in my opinion the most important thing for them is to avoid heart-drain. hearts (flight of hearts). A flight of hearts would bring as a consequence not only the possibility of losing the aid that remittances currently mean, but more importantly, that the nation would lose many of its citizens forever, precisely those who, by emigrating, may have shown the greatest capacity for initiative. .

Today, even with so much talk about globalization, economic records continue to be kept based only on local geographic boundaries. For example, if a Guatemalan leaves his country, he becomes part of the PTB of his host country and only his family remittance will be recorded in the economic figures of his Guatemala. The foregoing is an erroneous way of approaching the matter, since, in my opinion, in a globalized world a Guatemalan should never be less Guatemalan for the mere fact of working elsewhere. In this sense, all the gross income that an emigrant obtains abroad should be part of the GNP of their country of origin and this would more clearly show the country's need to support its emigrants instead of forgetting about them.

I believe that the previous reflections clearly indicate what should then be the main function of, for example, the universities in Central America, with respect to the emigrants from their countries. On the one hand, they must analyze and develop the programs that can help an emigrant to maximize their potential in a foreign country, when they have made the decision to emigrate, and on the other, analyze and develop the programs that can help an emigrant not to lose contact with their country of origin.

Based on the above appreciation and on the fact that there is nothing higher than the absolutely primary, I would recommend that universities immediately develop some simple virtual courses on the history, geography and culture of their respective countries and place them at the available to all those who are about to become the first generation of children of Central American emigrants... and before we lose their hearts forever.

Urgent Postscript: On December 7, 2006 the Pew Hispanic Center, the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Migration Policy Institute published some results of the National Latino Survey that they conducted in the United States. The results are frightening, since seeing how quickly immigrants forget to return, stop making transfers and even lose frequent contact with family and friends, the "flight of hearts" would seem to be a ferocious disease.

Personally, I am eagerly seeking the United States to authorize a program where duly registered United States citizens can become responsible as official escorts, to allow illegal immigrants into the United States who for all practical purposes are "imprisoned" in that country for as long as they do not dare to lose the option of staying, they can go and return to their country to "warm their hearts", without the authorities leaving a record of their trip.

Published in El Tiempo Latino, Washington D.C.

America, please allow for the use of chaperones at the borders

Sir, so much has been spoken and written about the “brain drain” in relation to migration, and so little about the much more serious and final “heart drain” that occurs when the homeland is forgotten. Currently millions of illegal immigrants are de facto imprisoned in the United States since they do not dare to go back to their homelands. Of course, they can always go home legally, but they cannot afford to lose their option of returning here, once they leave. This is the source of millions of human tragedies when they cannot visit a grandmother who is ill, a father on his sixtieth birthday, a sister’s wedding, and perhaps even a daughter’s First Communion. And all this happens, in fact, for absolutely no good reason at all.

While America makes up its mind about what to do with all the illegal migrants, could it not at least show some of its well renowned kindness? Could it not, for instance, authorize respectable American citizens, churches, or recognized NGOs to operate as official chaperones and to make themselves responsible for accompanying an immigrant to his homeland, for a week or so, to help him warm up his heart, and then returning him here, with no one at the borders objecting or making a record of it?