According to the public relations and information center of the Vice-Presidency for science and technology affairs, Sorena Sattari, the vice president for science and technology affairs, stated during a specialized meeting with the title of “Pathology of Immigration and Return of Persuaded and Educated Iranians”, which was held in Sharif University of Industry: looking at the valid international statistics demonstrated that Iran is generally not a country with high emigration rates.

The vice president for science and technology affairs emphasized the focusing on return policies for elites instead of sending policies, expressing: implementation of these policies as pilot in the past few years has led to the return of more than two thousand individuals. 

Necessity of Realization of Elite Attraction Policies

The vice president for science and technology affairs pointed out that China and Saudi Arabia have eight and five times more students in America, respectively, asserting: the fact that our youth study abroad is not a bad thing. However, our policies must be in a way that there is a foundation for attracting and maintaining elites in Iran after education and cooperation with them in scientific and technological areas.

The Highest Rate of Attraction of Emigrated Elites in Startups and Knowledge-based Companies

President of the national elites foundation regarded providing unscientific statistics and some political and media disputes the cause of lack of presenting a clear and actual image on the current condition of the Iranian elites and even simple individuals, stating: with the imagination that many Iranian youth leave the country for studying abroad, some funds have been ended. Meanwhile, according to the statistics of the United Nation, the number of Iranian emigrants is 30-35 thousand cases, which is not a high number compared to the total population of the country and the mean global rate.

Sattari considered this as the result of proper implementation of policies in Iran, adding: this number is about 30% higher than global mean since Iran has given power to the academic experts in the field of basic science engineering but has not focused on return policies of these graduates.

He continued: many countries properly work on their return policies. For instance, China does not give fund to its students due to the belief that these costs will be supported by the destination country. In this respect, a city is being constructed in China based on nano knowledge and ICT.

Effective Policies of Elite and Student Return in the Past Three Years

The vice president for science and technology affairs pointed out the implementation of articles of the law for support of knowledge-based companies as an efficient infrastructure to create an ecosystem of entrepreneurship and making the environment suitable for non-resident Iranian elites and students, marking: the issue of realization of law to support knowledge-based companies is seriously being followed up. Today, we witness favorable results in this area, in a way that there are currently 3500 knowledge-based companies with 60 thousand billion sales rate in the country.

He also emphasized the fact that laying such foundations can attract Iranian youth from other countries. In this respect, he mentioned: this capacity can fight with oil-based economy and bureaucratic government. This system can have more applicability and challenge our government system. We are even proud of them.

Sattari regarded successful service startups in the area of transportation as successful samples of job creation and attraction of non-resident Iranian elites.

The vice president for science and technology affairs pointed out the initiation of this trend in universities of the country, affirming: the current ecosystem that is being formed around universities and its sample can be seen by the establishment of innovation centers, accelerators and knowledge-based companies around prominent universities of the country will lead to serious changes in the economy of the country.