Reverse brain drain pulls Brazilians home, and Europeans with them

Cruz is hardly alone. There is Yiannis Chanis, from Greece, who landed in Rio de Janeiro a year ago, with a job in hand in the nation's booming energy sector and a sense of relief to be leaving the economic crisis of Europe behind. There is Rute Honrado, a Portuguese woman who couldn't find a job as an architect in Lisbon and was weighed down by pessimism all around her, she says. She arrived in February.

And there is Bernardo Fontoura, who left Lisbon last month with dreams of working at a mega event in business communications. He came for what he calls Brazil's "golden age."

Foreign migrants gentrify Rio slums

Golden age migration is palpable, says Helion Póvoa Neto, a migration expert at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. "There is this sensation of Brazil as a new land of opportunity. There is something new happening."

Today, Cariocas navigate subways and buses to a din of Greek- and Spanish-accented conversation; they plow into heaps of lunchtime beans and farofa in downtown Rio restaurants alongside Portuguese workers; and Rio hillside favelas (slums) are being gentrified by foreigners daunted by the pricier beachside enclaves.

Many foreign newcomers are just trying to get ahead in careers stalled at home. But their very presence is changing Brazil.

Reverse migration is starkly visible, too, in the numbers of both returning Brazilians and international citizens gaining legal right to live and work here. From 2010 to April 2012, the number of regularized foreigners living in Brazil increased by more than 50 percent, to 1.5 million, according to the Ministry of Justice. And from 2005 to 2010, the number of Brazilians living abroad dropped from an estimated 4 million to 2 million: Some were unwilling returnees, amid harsher immigration enforcement in the US and a weakened economy; but many came because home is now where their best opportunities lie.

While Paulo Sérgio de Almeida, the director of the National Immigration Council of Brazil, hesitates to call Brazil a new country of immigration, as the national media has, he says it is certain more are coming home than leaving.

Immigrant wave pushes social openings

The internationalization of Brazil – by nationals returning with changed expectations of their homeland as well as the influence of new immigrants – could have major implications for the country as it grows, say some experts. In previous waves of migration to Brazil after World War II, European immigrants were mostly from the countryside. This wave is of young, highly qualified professionals.

"These are people from advanced democracies with different expectations about society," says Mauricio Santoro, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation here. "[F]oreign people who live in Brazil ... are very critical about social inequalities in Brazil. This is a very good thing."

Some see signs of Brazil adapting. Politicians are debating an immigration law to facilitate the entrance of high-skilled professionals. That, says Maria Luisa Castelo, head of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in São Paulo, is an example of the government creating a better business environment..

It was this new environment that prompted Lago and Orofino to start Meu Rio. "Brazil was changing so quickly, I wanted to be part of the change also," says Lago. "It was a good moment, when you can make a difference here, but when there are old problems that persist."

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