Skilled Migration: Who Should Pay for What? A Critique of the Bhagwati Tax

Abstract

Brain drain critiques and human rights advocates have conflicting views on emigration. From a brain drain perspective, the emigration harms a country when emigrants are skilled and the source country is poor. From the human rights perspective, the right “to leave any country, including one’s own” is a fundamental right, protected for all, whatever their skills. Is the concern with poverty and social justice at odds with the right to emigrate? This article shows that social justice is not incompatible with the right to emigration but rather with restrictions on mobility. It will be argued that skilled migrants should not pay neither (i.) to compensate the welfare loss occasioned to their country of origin; (ii.) nor to discharge for their obligation to the national community when it publicly financed their education; nor (iii.) to compensate for the resulting inequality of opportunities between themselves and their non-migrant compatriots.

Keywords: brain drain, education, economic loss, equal opportunity, global justice

JEL Classification: J61, H20, H52, O15, F22, H23