BRAIN LEAK IN VENEZUELA

During the Second World War and the end of the 40s, Venezuela received thousands of immigrants from Portugal, Spain, Italy, among other countries, who settled in our country in search of the ideal place to live and leave behind the hardships that the wars left them. This avalanche of immigrants who came to the country was an important part of the nation's economic and cultural development. Venezuela painted for many years, perhaps during the 70s and 80s, as an ideal place to live, the envy of Latin America if you want to say: oil riches, quality education, solid democracy and so on. However, today the picture is different, there is no talk of Venezuela as the ideal place to establish a profession or family, it is not that prodigious land that was spoken of for many years. Now, on the other hand, the red figures in insecurity, economic instability, the high cost of living, unemployment, the terrible quality of life are frightening Venezuelans, especially young people: the future of the nation. Currently, there are many young people who have left the country in search of professional improvements and quality of life. Just to exemplify this situation, which seems to escape from the hands or has not been given due attention by the State authorities, it is believed that there are an estimated nine thousand Venezuelan scientists who currently live and practice in the United States, compared to the six thousand in Venezuela.

Although the brain drain is given primarily because it is the recent graduates who decide to seek other paths outside the territorial limits of their native country, there is also a considerable number of companies that look for talent in Venezuela and decide to take them to other countries offering improvements in the quality of life and in the salary to be earned. Of course, this scenario has many aspects, not only the economic and social ones, the political sphere has also greatly affected the decisions of those who have emigrated from the country or at least plan to do so. Another issue that must be pointed out is how they have been presented in the last five years, for example, the instability in large companies that can employ recent graduates. Many of these have closed or diminished considerably the number of workers due to the economic imbalances that the government has raised, such as the increase in the dollar or the constant threats of expropriations. Without companies there are no employers, without employers there are no jobs, this is what the situation looks like for many professionals who aspire to work in a company. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines the brain drain as "the exit of educated or professional people from one country, field or sector, to another, generally to obtain better living conditions or salary" (Mahroum: 1). On the other hand, Enrique Oteiza (2000), in his studies on the emigration of professionals and skilled workers from Argentina to the United States, concludes that the brain drain constitutes a type of selective international migration of people with a high level of qualification. Interpreting the above, the brain drain denotes the current abroad of competitive people from their country of origin, to another in the search mainly for better wages and better quality of life. Two essential elements about brain drain can be identified. In the first place, it refers to people who have received a training of certain depth on a certain discipline; Secondly, the main motivation for the progress of these people is the search for better working conditions. In this sense, one might think, on the one hand, in developing countries where working conditions are precarious or where the existing business fabric is not deep enough to occupy the number of specialized professionals who offer their services in the market.

On the other hand, it could be developed countries, in which the structural characteristics of labor markets are not able to absorb all new graduates and even create or perpetuate existing levels of unemployment. That is, the brain drain affects both developed and developing countries alike, albeit with different intensity and peculiarity. Obviously, the negative effect for the country from which the workers depart, essentially, the human capital endowment available to a country is decisive for its economic growth. When a country loses its most qualified workers, it undergoes a process of decapitalization (human). However, recently there have been arguments that the brain drain also has positive effects for the worker-emitting country, including: the departure of some workers motivates the rest by increasing their incentives to receive more education, that increases the reserve of human capital of the country; On the other hand, migrants make both monetary and knowledge transfers, which may be beneficial for the issuing country; also, emigration encourages and improves the flow of information and knowledge.

Valecillos (1993) refers that, in the 60s, the exit abroad of Venezuelans who wanted to carry out their undergraduate and postgraduate university studies abroad took place in our country. The majority were constituted by middle-class people and / or children of immigrants who aspired to a high-level professional training of excellence, since they had the perception that the country did not have the capacity to provide it, in addition to reasons of social, cultural and other nature. For Garbi (1991) part of the escaped professionals, do not rule out the fact of returning to their country, since in these are certain links that attract them, while others venture more and decide to leave to not return. That is why, when migration is projected as transitory, it leads to accumulation in the family nucleus of origin with return visits. On the other hand, when the migratory project is or becomes a definitive installation in the country of reception, the economic links with the nucleus of origin tend to be limited to remaining in the receiving one. But when migrants return to their country of origin in most cases, they do not find stimulating areas to turn their knowledge. This is why, commenting on the above, that a positive mechanism to reduce the possibility of flight to the outside would be the creation of more stimulating opportunities in the country, as well as the creation of an adequate means of work, which allows the knowledge to be put into practice, skills, skills acquired during university training, also allowing to cover the necessities of life.
According to Valecillos (1993), it is feasible to design programs to capture the national talent found in other countries, with the purpose of taking advantage of the knowledge and techniques learned and / or developed by Venezuelan professionals and scientists residing abroad. In the same way, Pellegrino and Calvo (2001) state that the networks of re-linking can generate stimulating situations for national development. In an interview with Arcely Costa, graduated from Universidad Simón Bolívar (2007) as Chemical Engineer, currently Analyst of Operations of Aquanima - Grupo Santander in Madrid, Spain, declares the following: "The drain of talents is directly proportional to the situation of the country, that is, the greater the crisis, the greater the flight. If Venezuela offered security, sources of employment well remunerated for all professionals and political stability, maybe they would be less, but still someone would always leave. " In relation to the above, and in a general way, countries that expel or originate human resources could try policies of retention and / or return of their talents on the basis of considering a strategic asset for their development the conservation of them; while the receiving or destination countries of these migrants will probably regulate more and more the volume and characteristics of the human resources that enter their borders.

In short, the situation is really problematic for engineers, doctors, journalists, scientists, among others who have seen how the quality and quantity of employment in our country has declined. It is considered that this exodus is separating the families and interrupting careers, but it is also sabotaging the future of the nation. While many countries in the developing world are trying to attract expatriates to inject and catapult their recovering economies and join their fizzled democracies, the bleeding of Venezuelan intellectual capacity is destroying universities and strategic discussion groups, disabling industries and accelerating the economic disorder that threatens to destroy one of the richest countries in the hemisphere.