The Bahamas' tight immigration laws are a "serious issue" facing national growth according to the authors of a recent Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) report on brain drain in this country and the wider Caribbean.
The report from the IDB titled "Is there a Caribbean Sclerosis?" released earlier this month revealed that 61 percent of tertiary-educated Bahamians sought employment abroad.
In an interview on Morning Blend on Guardian Talk Radio yesterday, IDB economist and author of the report Inder Ruprah outlined The Bahamas' need to develop opportunities for recent college and university graduates, while also easing its immigration laws.
His comments mark him as one of a number of commentators from the political level to the private sector who have been talking and calling of late for reforms to immigration if the economic recovery is to strengthen.
"[Brain drain] does imply certain things. It does mean that one should be free to provide work permits to foreigners. It's a real serious issue; if a firm is hindered in finding the appropriate skills in this country then it won't work in this country.
"If it's a local or a foreigner, isn't it better to have that company working here and generating more jobs at the end of the day?" asked Ruprah, a regional economic advisor in the IDB's Caribbean Country Department.
Ruprah's report highlighted how growth in the Caribbean as a whole has stagnated since the 1970s, when its small economies grew faster than global peers. It calls on regional economies to focus on "getting the macroeconomics right", balancing their debt to GDP ratios; creating policies that allow growth to be driven by the private sector, which is currently constrained by inefficiencies and regulation; and shifting its global trading relationships more towards emerging economies such as Brazil where the middle class is growing at a rapid pace.
Peter Goudie, director of the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation (BCCEC), similarly voiced his support of immigration reform in the wake of the report, saying "immigration needs to work both ways."
"Our immigration policy is so rigid that we scare people away who could probably be good entrepreneurs and create jobs," said Goudie in an interview with Guardian Business. "I know we're trying to protect jobs, but we're not creating and enabling an environments to create jobs."
"In the short term, relax some of our immigration policies," argued Goudie. "Don't be so rough on them coming in." When discussing potential long-term solutions to brain drain, Goudie felt that the country needed to, "better our education system so that we have more good people staying here."
Prime Minister Perry Christie made comments earlier this month suggesting that The Bahamas could benefit from more lax immigration policies for affluent foreigners. The government additionally claimed that it was dedicated to establishing a "special unit" within the department of immigration that would expedite the approval of residency and work permit applications for "high-net-worth individuals."
Speaking more broadly on the issue of brain drain, Ruprah added, "Around about 60 percent of people with tertiary education emigrated out of the country. Talking like an economist you say what are the returns I get from my investment in education. And one way of measuring it is the remittances I get back.
"The expenditure countries make on education is more than the remittances they get back. Having an educated population is more than just economic returns, it's about the health of the society," stated Ruprah. "The country needs to grow and generate good paying jobs for people with tertiary education, that's the solution."
Cherran O'Brien, IDB economics consultants, built on the issue, stating, "To put it into context, it's about whether we have the infrastructure here to attract people to come and work. There are certain professions that require certain environments to be able to attract people to come and work."
Goudie also felt that a lack of opportunities within certain fields, particularly the sciences, presented a challenge to recent graduates. The director claimed that international employment often presented a higher standard of living and increased chances of upward mobility within respective industries to Bahamian graduates than local programs.
"There are probably more opportunities abroad than there are here," said Goudie, adding that, "Some of our students stay away because they become specialists but can't research here because we don't have the facilities... there needs to be more incentives for them to come back."

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