The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

We must all thank Bahamasuncensored.com for publishing the first sensible take on this unbelievably stupid “brain drain” non-issue that the local media seem to have invented in their apparent boredom with the real issues.

In a letter on that site, Kortney Rodgers points out the obvious lunacy at the heart of the argument that educated young people leaving here is somehow necessarily a bad thing.

Rodgers asks whether an aspiring astrophysicist is somehow unpatriotic for leaving Nassau to go to where astrophysicists actually have job opportunities. Or perhaps government should set up an astrophysics department in the ministry of works just to keep him or her here.

The Bahamas, as a small, high-income country with a relatively diverse economy – extremely diverse for its population size – continues to attract huge numbers of migrants at the bottom of its employment structure. That is the most important fundamental evidence of a basically good and successful economy.

Educated, young, vibrant people leave here for the same reason they leave any population centre of 300,000 souls, whether that be Tampa, Florida, Bakersfield, California or Hull, England. They head to more cosmopolitan places with lifestyle and work opportunities that are more diverse. Unlike most such places, though, in the Bahamas they usually come back.

It is the height of stupidity to expect a country the size of ours to cater to every single career choice by being a centre of the most obscure and specialised industries. Yet last week some young Bahamian was complaining that he had to leave home to make his career – as a rapper!

As the world specialises and globalises, it is normal that people globe-trot to places where certain industries cluster. Rappers will clearly have to leave Kansas to make it big, just as actors will have to leave even a vast metropolis like London to make it big.

Of four siblings, I am the only one living in the Bahamas. The other three live in three separate continents, yet not one of them left here seeking work, or because the Bahamas failed them. They left because as diverse and educated Bahamians, they liked some aspect of the lifestyle found elsewhere. That is fine and healthy. When they return, it can only enrich the Bahamas.

ANDREW ALLEN

Nassau,

November 6, 2014.