system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How valid is the concept of “Brain Drain”? Is it proven that the immigration of high-skilled workers to other countries has an overall negative impact on the home country’s economic growth, especially in the case of developing countries?

I checked the FAQ on Immigration but that focuses more on the host country than the home country.
gpt
I can write about this from a health professional perspective.

First, brain drain imposes a double burden on the home country:

1. The home country invested in the education of the health worker who leaves, providing the home country no return on investment.
2. Many home countries already suffer from a dearth of health workers.

Regarding #1, many (most?) countries publicly educate workers using tax money. The worst case scenario is workers that leave and never return nor provide remittances as the home country gets absolutely nothing from its investment.

Regarding #2, many countries, especially sub-saharan countries, have less than the WHO's recommended 2.5 health workers per 1000 people. E.g. post-Ebola, Liberia had only 0.1 health workers per 1000 people.

In this context, targeted recruitment of health workers from certain countries has been seen as a threat to those counties' health systems and a threat to global health.

This is why the WHO promulgated the Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel. It is meant to balance the rights of individuals to move and work to where they want with the needs of both host and home countries. The recognition that certain kinds of international recruitment, such as from India or Philippines where they specifically train health workers for the international market, has different benefits and costs than other recruitment makes this issue too complex to simply label as "bad" or "good".