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 If the exodus has helped in some way to alleviate the
unemployment problem the emigration of Brazilians
is mainly a negative fact for the country as most emigrants
are people with college degrees.
By Adelle Mol
For almost five centuries as a land of immigrants, Brazil has been exporting more
people than receiving them from foreign places. According to the recent study Estimation
of Migratory Balances, Liquid Rates of Migration and International Emigrants, 2,355,057
Brazilians left the country between 1986 and 1996 while only 169,303 immigrants entered
Brazil. This represents a negative balance of 2,185,755 people.
If the exodus has helped in some way to alleviate the unemployment problem in the
country and is allowing those overseas to send hard currency back to their homeland, the
emigration of Brazilians is mainly a negative fact for the country as most emigrants are
people with college degrees. To make matters worse, a high percentage are between the ages
of 20 and 35.
"Brazil is losing population in significant numbers," says professor José
Alberto Magno de Carvalho, director of Minas Gerais Federal University's Cedeplar (Centro
de Desenvolvimento e Planejamento Regional—Center of Development and Regional
Planning) "Today, we are clearly an emigrant county. The Brazilian who is emigrating
has a better than average socio-economic level and schooling. Naturally, a poor person has
no means to pay to illegally enter the United States. If we don't change course, in the
medium and long run, Brazil will be investing in people to lose them soon after."
In an interview with Brasília's daily Correio Brasiliense, Carvalho, who got
his PhD in London in the early '70s, talked about the difference between Brazilian college
students from his time and today: "The students of my generation used to get their
PhD and come back to Brazil because the universities were absorbing researchers and
perspectives were promising. The education of a doctor costs $150,000 to the society. But
today, this doctor prefers to stay in the United States and make up to $30,000 a month
instead of returning to Brazil and earn a salary that at best might reach $3,000 a month.
Carvalho estimates that in ten years the population of Brazil will start to go down if
the drop in birth rates continues. While at the end of the 60's a Brazilian woman would
have an average of 6 children by age 50, today this number has fallen to 2.2 children. The
country is very close to the 2.1 children by woman needed to keep the population
stationary. "That means in 20 years those emigrated Brazilians will be missed even
more," says Carvalho.
For sociologist Mary Garcia Castro, who coordinates the CNPD's (Comissão Nacional de
População e Desenvolvimento—National Commission on Population and Development)
International Migrations Work Group the age of the people emigrating is the most worrisome
fact of the phenomenon:
"The loss of workers is still not high enough to destabilize the Brazilian
economy, but it is a disturbing trend. What worries me the most is it is not the lack of
educated people, but that of youngsters, who are to become Brazil's educated people."
She says she cannot understand why some Brazilian sectors are worried about the number
of foreigners in Brazil: "Foreigners represent less than 5 percent of the total
workforce. The best thing in a crisis of employment is to look for a scapegoat. We cannot
close the country's door as the United States does by creating restrictive measures for
the foreign workforce, while at the same time using aggressive recruiting to draw
qualified workers."
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