Before the 1979 rebellion, Iran was a good country for living and economic prosperity, and not only students returned to Iran after their studies, even immigrants from Western countries came to Iran, the same ones who invest in Turkey, Qatar, and the UAE today.
Today, Iran hosts a significant number of foreign immigrants. Almost all of them have migrated from worse countries than Iran, and according to the 2017 population and housing census, immigrants living in Iran are more than Afghanistan (one million and 584 thousand tons), Iraq (34 thousand and 500 tons), respectively. and Pakistan (14 thousand three hundred tons). According to these statistics, the province of usual residence of these immigrants was Tehran for Afghans and Qom for Iraqis and Pakistanis, which does not need to be explained.
The amount of immigration from Iran is also significant. In 2017, Hossein Abdo Tabrizi said that one and a half million Iranians are in line to immigrate to Canada and Australia. After the 1979 revolution, several immigration waves started in Iran; The first wave for political reasons, immediately after the revolution of 1959 and mostly towards the United States, the second wave for political-ideological reasons at the beginning of the 1982s and mostly towards Europe, the third wave with reasons such as obtaining a higher quality of life and prosperity towards countries like Canada and Australia and the fourth wave that happened for political reasons and started in 2009. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the political, social and economic crises of Iran have manifested in the dimensions of nationwide demonstrations and, accompanied by natural disasters, have added to the difficulty of life in this country; These conditions increased the incentives to emigrate from Iran. During this period, there have been many estimates of the heavy loss of capitalists' migration and brain drain from Iran, some of which have been confirmed by the official sources of this country.

Brain drain from Iran

 Brain drain from Iran is said to be the emigration of experts and scientific elites from Iran, which is one of the social, economic and educational problems of this country. According to the statistics of the Islamic Council in 2010, 60,000 Iranians who immigrated this year are classified as elite immigrants. These people often have positions in scientific Olympiads or are among the top candidates in entrance exams or universities. But a significant percentage of science graduates still tend to migrate to advanced countries. In its 2009 report, the International Monetary Fund announced that Iran ranks first among 91 developing or underdeveloped countries in terms of elite immigration. And some officials even rule out the existence of brain drain from Iran.
The International Monetary Fund has mentioned unemployment, low level of income of professors and elites, financial and administrative inadequacies, lack of specialized-scientific facilities and political and social instability among the reasons for the migration of Iranians.
In the field of brain drain, Iran is facing the migration of 150,000 to 180,000 educated specialists in recent decades. According to the report of the German Federal Office of Immigration and Asylum, about 47% of Iranian asylum seekers have a degree higher than a high school diploma. According to the official statistics of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including those born abroad, about 4 million Iranians live abroad. Of these, about 1.5 million have immigrated directly from Iran.
When we talk about the term "elite migration", we first think of words such as "brain drain", "elite drain" and "capital drain". This means that in the first view, some people with a pessimistic view consider those who migrate beyond the borders as traitors to the homeland and greed, and in the second view, some people see migration and brain rotation as a special feature of the globalization of information and knowledge-oriented societies. they know Therefore, it seems that the issue of elite migration is a multi-faceted phenomenon, because in the present era, brain drain and elite migration cannot be called an inherently negative category, but the opportunities arising from the possibility of migration should be identified and exploited. This type of view is also desired in the "globalization theory", because the globalization theory believes that globalization, especially the "globalization of the labor market", has provided new opportunities for better use of specialized human resources on a global scale. It has greatly increased the access of experts from developing countries to the advanced industrial labor market.