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Comment by legolas2412 | Hacker News Reader

> including the people they have schooled and trained to provide for their own population.

Oh, I didn't realize I was a slave to a country. And the act of immigration which I willfully do, and the host country is pretty much hostile about, is "stealing" me. If Western countries wanted to steal me, they should not have put up such roadblocks to immigration

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Brain drain is a real phenomenon and a real problem. Your personal feelings about it are irrelevant.

It's a "problem" only if you assume nation-states own the brains of their citizens, and have the right to dictate that they stay within their borders.

There's a lot of brains draining from Russia right now due to Putin's policies. Should we deport them all back to Russia?

> It's a "problem" only if you assume nation-states own the brains of their citizens

It is a problem for a nation-state whether you assume that nation-state owns the brains of their citizens or not.

> There's a lot of brains draining from Russia right now due to Putin's policies. Should we deport them all back to Russia?

Nobody said anything like that. You should respond to what was written and not to what is in your head.

If countries don't want a brain drain, perhaps they should adopt more of the policies of countries their brains are escaping to.

Did you seriously just tell entire countries "have you tried not being poor?"

There's no honour in getting your family killed by illiterate religious fanatics based on how your name sounds "for the greater good". So yes, the onus IS on those large collection of people (country) to recognise that their stone age era values and behaviours are driving away people who might give them a fighting chance to compete in the modern world.

It's policy and corruption (not to mention war) that makes the people poor in the first place.

People complain when the US takes over a country and tries to fix it. So yeah, it's up to the citizens.

Brain drain is a real phenomenon but may not be a real problem. I don't know of any country which is suffering or whose growth is hindered because of lack of brainpower.

That’s just arguing in bad faith.

No one is denying that it’s your right to move around. It doesn’t make it any less of a bad deal for your home country. They invested in you and you left. Do this a few million times and you feel the effect.

No one is blaming you. The person above just pointed out that immigration isn’t a free lunch.

They (birth country) didn’t invest in shit. It’s run by right wing extremists who at one point were less than 100m away ready to burn down our house and family alive. I’ll happily clean toilets in a different country than to go back to my “home” country. Its very difficult to wrap up your whole family and move to another country speaking a different language, betting your entire life savings in the process. But often the social climate and the people who adhere to those norms are so bad that any amount of effort to get away from it is acceptable.

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