How can a country develop the skills of its population and have them stay? Suppose, I am a leader of a country, and a lot of my citizens go to the Gulf states (see 3.1, Page-09) to work as unskilled laborers. I see my population working abroad as laborers as a prestige concern of my country, and strategic baggage.
What can I do so that these laborers happily come back home, happily stay in their own country, and contribute to their own country's economy?
The brain drain is a difficult issue facing many countries around the world. Simply, they need something to come back to. Laborers generally leave countries because there is insufficient economic activity for them domestically. If a country wants to retain workers, they need to build up educational infrastructure, encourage foreign direct investment, and open up border to free trade. However, building domestic economic infrastructure requires skilled labor - the very laborers who generally leave for foreign markets. Its a bit of a catch-22.