Much like President Trump, Mexico's populist president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador makes foolish statements, sometimes to divert attention from bigger problems. But the Mexican leader's recent comments about Mexicans who studied abroad are unusually silly.
Lopez Obrador said in his daily press briefing on July 18 that much of Mexico's problems stem from the fact that so many of its economists and public policy experts have studied abroad.
Citing Mario Puzo's novel "The Godfather," he noted that Mafia boss Don Corleone had sent his own son to study abroad, adding that, "Those who have done the most damage to this country are those who supposedly have more knowledge."
Lopez Obrador, who took 14 years to complete his undergraduate studies in Mexico and has traveled abroad very few times in his life, was amplifying an old myth often embraced by Latin American populists that studying in foreign countries causes a "brain drain" that hurts the students' home countries.
In fact, it's the opposite. The outdated brain-drain concept was been replaced decades ago by that of "brain circulation" _ sending students abroad, and reaping the benefits of their acquired knowledge. It has been a major reason behind the success of China, India, South Korea and other countries in expanding their economies and reducing poverty.
It's no coincidence that _ despite Trump's recent ill-fated attempt to cancel the visas of many of such students _ there currently are 369,000 foreign students from China, 202,000 from India and 52,000 from South Korea in U.S. colleges, according to the U.S. Institute of International Education.
By comparison, there are only 16,000 students from Brazil, 15,000 students from Mexico, 8,000 from Colombia and 2,400 from Argentina in U.S. colleges right now. Even Vietnam, a Communist country, has 24,000 students in U.S. universities, more than any Latin American country.
In my travels to China, India, South Korea and other Asian countries, I never encountered complaints of a brain drain. On the contrary, virtually every time I raised the subject, I was told that students going to the world's best universities in the United States or Europe most often end up contributing to their home countries.
Some return home with greater knowledge and a network of contacts that allow them to excel in their own countries' universities. Others remain abroad and often become successful business people who eventually invest in their home countries. And even those who never go back often send remittances to relatives back home, helping their countries' economies.
India is a textbook case of how brain circulation has helped one of the world's poorest countries grow. Many of the tens of thousands of Indian engineering students in U.S. colleges in the 1990s stayed in the United States after graduating, worked for a while at technology firms and later set up their own software startups.
They soon discovered that while they had to pay $50,000 a year to a recently graduated software engineer in California, they could hire a software engineer in India for $3,300 a year. So they started setting up software companies in Bangalore, and doing part of their engineering work there. Bangalore soon became India's technology hub and a major engine of India's economy.
But Lopez Obrador and other Latin American so-called "progresaurs" _ political dinosaurs who describe themselves as progressives _ cling to the outdated belief that their countries are hurt by a brain drain.
Maria Elena Alvarez-Buylla, head of Mexico's government-run Science and Technology agency CONACYT, also has been quoted expressing skepticism about her country's study-abroad programs.
Granted, Lopez Obrador is probably happy that his comments about foreign students made big headlines in Mexico and diverted public attention from the projected 10.5% collapse of the country's economy this year, its 40,000 COVID-19 deaths and the frightening video of a huge convoy of a drug cartel's armored vehicles that surfaced last week, openly defying the Mexican army.
But his statement about foreign students should be denounced for what it is: a major display of outdated thinking, which can cause Mexico a lot of harm if it's not debunked.
