Skills and Talent of Immigrants:A Comparison between the European Union and the United States

The nineties has been a period of increasing migratory flows from lessdeveloped countries to industrialized nations. It is instructive to compare the two largesteconomies in the world, the European Union and the United States, in terms of themagnitude, trends and composition of their migratory inflows. While the two economiesare similar in terms of size and level of development, the European Union still lagsbehind in its ability to attract immigrants and in the degree of internal mobility of itscitizens. Moreover we document a general feature that became more prominent duringthe nineties. While both economies attracted less educated workers (primary schoolgraduates) as well as highly educated workers (college graduates) from less developedcountries, the United States have been able to attract ?talent?,( i.e. the best among theskilled workers) from all over the world at a rate unmatched by the European Union. Infact the US attracted a large number of talents from the European Union itself during thenineties. This ?brain drain? (probably driven by the large economic reward granted bythe American economy to scientific, technological and professional talent) is worrisomefor the European Union. Its ability to keep pace with the economic growth of the UnitedStates depends, in fact, on its ability to compete in the scientific and technological fields.