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Brain drain or human capital flight is a large emigration of individuals with technical skills or knowledge, normally due to conflict, lack of opportunity, political instability, or health risks. Brain drain is usually regarded as an economic cost, since emigrants usually take with them the fraction of value of their training sponsored by the government. It is a parallel of capital flight which refers to the same movement of financial capital. The term was coined by the Royal Society to describe the emigration of "scientists and technologists" to North America from post-war Europe. The converse phenomenon is brain gain, which occurs when there is a large-scale immigration of technically qualified persons. Brain drain can be stopped by providing individuals who have expertise with career opportunities and giving them opportunities to prove their capabilities.

    Brain drains are common amongst developing nations, such as the former colonies of Africa the island nations of the Caribbean, and particularly in centralized economies such as former East Germany and the Soviet Union, where marketable skills were not financially rewarded.

An opposite situation, in which many trained and talented individuals seek entrance into a country, is called a brain gain; this may create a brain drain in the nations that the individuals are leaving. A Canadian symposium in 2000 gave circulation to the new term, at a time when many highly skilled Canadians were moving to the United States, while simultaneously many qualified immigrants were coming to Canada from a number of different nations. This is sometimes referred to as a 'brain transplant'.

    In 2000, the US Congress announced it was raising the annual cap on the number of temporary work visas granted to highly skilled professionals under its H1B visa program, from 115,000 to 195,000 per year, effective through 2003. That suggests a ballpark figure for the influx of talent into the United States at that time. A significant portion of this program was initiated by lobbyists from the com****r industry, including Bill Gates.[68] In the same year the British government, in cooperation with the Wolfson Foundation, a research charity, launched a £20 million, five-year research award scheme aimed at drawing the return of the UK's leading expatriate scientists and sparking the migration of top young researchers to the United Kingdom.

Source: Wikipedia.org