Salman Seyed Afghahi, the deputy of the National Elite Foundation, announced the “agreement with the police to address migration offices and prevent the emigration of elite students.” He stated that the police will have a representative at the Elite Foundation to provide information on the entry and exit of elites within less than an hour.
In an interview with the regime’s Mehr News on February 19, Seyed Afghahi expressed concerns about some businesses in the migration sector operating with lower costs without providing evidence. He emphasized that these offices are financially supported by a certain system.
Contrary to the statements of Mohammad Javad Zarif, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Iranian regime, regarding student migration as “dark propaganda,” Seyed Afghahi dismissed the notion and criticized media manipulation on the subject as “loading the barrel of the enemy’s gun.”
Last week Zarif had claimed in Mardom Salari party’s congress that five out of every ten students he meets ask him to write resumes aimed at leaving the country.
Seyed Afghahi, on January 24, had stated that the migration of elites in the country is not in a crisis, and without revealing sources, mentioned that approximately 2,000 individuals who have studied abroad return to Iran annually.
Previously, in September 2023, the head of the Sociology Association warned of Iran being on the brink of a “very severe migration wave,” citing societal disillusionment, especially among youth and elites.
Simultaneously, the regime’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, urged students to resist the “evil attractions” causing an increase in the migration of academic elites to reach the peak.
In October 2022, Khamenei had criticized emigrant elites, calling them ungrateful, stating that they grow in Iran and leave when it’s time for their achievements to bear fruit.
Rokna News Agency, in August 2023, reported on a video of top-ranking students from the 2023 university entrance exam, where many expressed their intention to leave Iran, encouraged by their families.
Australia, the United States, Canada, Italy, France, and other European countries were mentioned as preferred destinations.
Factors such as lack of job opportunities, limited career advancement, inability to start a relevant business, social restrictions, inadequate welfare facilities, and poor economic conditions were cited as reasons for migration decisions in interviews.
In August 2023, the state-run Ham-Mihan newspaper highlighted the migration trend of top-ranking students in mathematics and physics from 2001 to 2016.
All top 10 students in 2008 and 2009 in these fields had emigrated from Iran.
The report revealed that in the 15-year period, a total of 114 individuals from the top-10 rankings of math and physics exams had migrated.
The data indicated that, on average, 78% of other elites had to the country, while the United States, Canada, and Switzerland were among the preferred destinations.
In winter 2023, Baram Salavati, the director of the Migration Observatory, stated that Iran had reached the threshold of 50,000 migrant students and had now surpassed 66,000.
He noted the rapid growth of the phenomenon of “increasing the population of foreign students,” though precise and up-to-date statistics were lacking.
Nevertheless, the National Migration Observatory’s survey data in 2022 indicated that Iran ranked seventeenth among countries sending students to the world.
