Thabo Mbeki Quotes

There is a huge number of people outside our borders who would love to come here. In fact, many of them come here, get well educated, and then are required to leave... This is a factor in income inequality.

Well-trained medical doctors and engineers leave Nigeria to the developed countries. We want to reverse that.

The brain drain from Africa has been reversed.

A perennial problem that has faced the Scottish Highlands is that, time and again, too many of the more talented young people have had to move elsewhere - even abroad - through a lack of opportunities that should have been available.

I think growing up in South Africa, and then moving to Canada, I'm just genuinely interested in the difference between the First World and the Third World, immigration, and how the new, globalized world is beginning to operate. All of those things run through my mind a lot.

The poor economic health of Europe contributed to the migrant crisis. All the migrants wanted to flood to the few healthy countries—–like Germany and the U.K.

A Dominican kitchen worker in New York City can make more money than a Dominican doctor working in the Dominican Republic. Why should anyone want to stay?

People tend to migrate from the third world to the metropolises of the very countries that once dominated them. Algerians to Paris; Puerto Ricans to New York; Pakistanis to London.

The Latin American people have become fed up with the 500 year siesta and the lack of opportunity. So they come to the United States. But that is because the leaders of their countries do not do anything to improve the situation…. When Mexican President Fox took office he observed that over half the Mexican population was living in poverty and that he was unlikely to make significant changes during his remaining term in office. That was a sophisticated way of saying to the Mexicans, “Go to the United States!”

The rich world has lots of well-paying jobs and an aging population that cannot fill them. The poor world has desperate workers. But while goods and capital can easily cross borders, modern labor cannot.

If you people can’t afford to live in our town, then you’ll just have to leave.

I don't know what country's willing to export - for free - the computer scientists, engineers, doctors. It's hard to me to understand.

Migration powers economic growth, reduces inequalities, and connects diverse societies. Yet it is also a source of political tensions and human tragedies.

Let's set things straight... there are 300 million people living in countries within the Nile basin in horrific economic and security conditions. The $500 that they earn in Israel every month is an annual salary in their countries of origin.

Filipino talents and skills are becoming ubiquitous in many parts of the world. Returning Filipino workers have helped improve our skills and technological standards.

Puerto Ricans are so well educated, they're so capable, they're so competent, but due to a lack of opportunity, when you graduate from college, you leave. Puerto Rico's number one export is human beings; Puerto Ricans!

By unwillingly robbing post-conflict nations of their most talented people, we in Europe are improving the odds these states fail, and feed the vicious circle of future conflicts.

A Wall Street money manager should not be able to pay a lower tax rate than a teacher or a nurse.

Many people today in the developed countries are so far removed from poverty and suffering and starvation that they lack empathy for the sufferings of others.

Many people are coming to this country for economic reasons. They're coming here to work. If you can make 50 cents in the heart of Mexico, for example, or make $5 here in America, $5.15, you're going to come here if you're worth your salt, if you want to put food on the table for your families. And that's what's happening.

How do you reconcile the lifestyle between the United States and Mexico? One is a very prosperous country, the other one is somewhat backwards. I mean, I don't want to denigrate them. And people want to go from Mexico into the US because it's much better there. Mexicans also have a grudge against the US. Most of the Western US was Mexican territory once, but they prefer to being in the US, not Mexico.

People come to this country from all over the world to pursue their dreams of driving a taxi or selling hot dogs or working in a sweatshop.

The main issue [of the Scientific Revolution] is that the people in the industrialised countries are getting richer, and those in the non-industrialised countries are at best standing still: so the gap between the industrialised countries and the rest is widening every day. On the world scale this is the gap between the rich and the poor.

Skills are expensive in Africa, best people are on American salaries.

The Canadian middle class is under less pressure than any other middle class in any developed country on the planet. So they feel good. They feel optimistic. They feel secure.