Look at it by population. US/UK/EU/Can/Aus, the more popular immigration destinations.

If providing a decent life to a hard working, aspirational individual whose work ethic and talent would have been pissed up the wall back at home counts as "developing off the back" of poorer nations, then I don't really see it as a bad thing at all.

Don't forget that many developing countries have a wide array of policies in place to ensure that they can't make proper use of their human capital.

My father-in-law, for example, is an environmental scientist who simply couldn't find work in his field (public sector) back in South Africa in the early 00s as there were racial quotas and affirmative action policies that didn't work in his favour.

He was offered a job in NZ, after a solid year of being unemployed, and jumped ship immediately. His talent wasn't stolen by the developed world so much as it wasted by his underdeveloped home.

I was referring to the era when resources were extracted to developed countries or labor (slaves) were moved around as needed to developing countries as “developing of the back” of poorer countries.

We are saying the same thing.