Iranian officials deny brain drain affecting country

Hassan Qashqavi

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister, Hassan Qashqavi expressed pride at the high rate of Iranian migration and claimed that there are also a similar number of highly trained people immigrating to Iran.

Hassan Qashqavi stressed that a greater number of expert minds are immigrating to Iran than the ones leaving. He justified his statement by saying that “there are certain statistics available.”

These statements of Qashqavi come at a time that the International Monetary Fund in its 2009 report announced that the Islamic Republic ranks first amongst the 91 developing and underdeveloped countries that are faced with a brain drain.

The report states that 180 thousand trained workforce are migrating from Iran each year. The report adds that this rate of migration is equal to a loss of 50 billion dollars a year for Iran. For example, the report states that currently 250 thousand Iranian engineers and physicians and more the 170 thousand Iranians with higher education live in the US.

According to official reports, 1.2 million Iranians graduate from Iranian universities and 15 percent of them leave Iran.

In May, Iranian Minister of Science, Kamron Daneshjoo, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dismissed the reality of Iran’s brain drain.