Students at the Faculty of Business and Insurance at LGU organized a conference entitled « The Immigration of Brains » that aims to stress this phenomenon in Lebanon.Dr. Pierre Khoury, Vice President for Development, inaugurated the conference welcoming all students, guests, and speakers. Then he spoke about the obvious aspect of an immigration that takes place in a country rich in qualified human resources. He also spoke about the multiple factors that make young people leave their home country and which are not restricted to limited job opportunities but extend to security, standard of living, and the quality of services. He explained that this phenomenon is taking place because industrial countries, where revenues are high and science and research encouraged, attract scientists and young researchers. Dr. Khoury insisted that immigration may bring in to the home country cash flow that constitutes a monetary advantage to the government, yet such advantage is artificially boosting the public deficit. Such cash, he added, would be better used to boost the economy than to help cover the public deficit.

In turn, Professor Jassem Ajaka proposed some solutions to immigration that favor the restoration of a reasonable interaction between employers and employees regulated by the government itself. He said that the government should develop the productive sectors and aim for a fair and equal distribution of the nation wealth at the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels, taking into consideration the unemployment rate, the GDP, and inflation. He insisted that the Lebanese job market cannot take in the 16.000 graduates that are trying to enter it every year. Consequently, 47% of these young graduates are left without jobs. Professor Ajaka affirmed that unemployment has an organizational aspect that leads to brain immigration due to limited job perspectives; an industrial aspect, that encourages brain immigration to more promising sectors; and a geographic aspect that leads to the immigration of brains from technologically underdeveloped countries where investments in agricultural and industrial sectors are poor and aggravated by lack of adequate measures to combat poverty and promote technological development. Ajaka insisted that research is the best means to stop the immigration of brains. Consequently, the government has to identify promising sectors, create investment funds, come up with new laws to accompany any technological development, go for fair and just laws that stop the flow of foreign labor, and establish research centers.

Dr. Makram Bou Nassar, professor of economy at AUB, insisted on the importance of establishing plans to stop the immigration of brains by bringing down the cost of accommodation, create jobs, and encourage cooperation between the private and public sectors. He also stressed the importance of extracting oil resources in order to create new jobs and to promote technology and its use in education and to introduce new majors in economy that would correspond to the Lebanese job market.

In turn, Dr. Kamel Wazni said that immigration that has always existed through generations constitutes an advantage to the welcoming countries that benefit of the scientific and cultural wealth of the immigrants whereas Lebanon enjoys the cash flow and the cultural exchange that result from such immigration. He insisted that the government should work for the needed growth rate and aim for the establishment of cultural and productive policies that would create jobs and promote personal initiative.

The conference ended with an open discussion between the speakers and the guests.