Many factors have resulted in the departure of villagers from their homes, such as the wide discrepancy between life in cities and in rural areas, the unequal distribution of the government funds and investment, and the concentration of industrial and educational centers in a limited number of cities.

Considering the importance of the role of the collective media in introducing people to city life, Dr. Sheikhavandi says, "When villagers see that city life is more prosperous and glittering, with stimuli such as finding jobs and benefiting from educational, recreational and health facilities, it makes people immigrate from the village to the city, to a place where they can lead a better life and ensure their children's physical, mental and cultural health.

"Other factors leading to immigration are the soldiers who come to cities during their military service. They usually stay in the cities after they finish their term of service. The educational system is another factor causing immigration from villages to cities. In many rural regions there is no higher education, and families have to immigrate to bigger towns so that their children can continue their studies. Naturally, they remain there."

---- Immigration Before the Islamic Revolution and After ----

Citing population growth statistics for cities, Sheikhavandi said, "Until the land reform, before the Islamic Revolution, we had a 2.5% population growth rate in cities, but afterwards from 1976 on, our cities grew at rate of 4% annually. This growth rate has been accelerating. The official growth rate has been announced to be over 3%. Metropolitan Tehran welcomes nearly half a million people every ten years because the capacity of this city has not been considered, neither before nor after the revolution, and it is expanding disproportionately."

---- Dangers Following Immigration ----

Undoubtedly the swelling of the cities and the abandonment of villages has negative consequences, including the aging of the rural society, social decay, lack of appropriate jobs, the shanty town phenomenon, destruction of farming lands, decrease of agricultural production, etc. This is the result of the immigration of rural residents to cities. Having studied the immigration phenomenon for years, Mohajer said, "When a society loses its human resources, it becomes disordered. In a village with a population of 1,000, approximately 600 of them are under 20 years of age. When the active young workforce leaves the village, life becomes extremely difficult for the remaining 60-70-year-old people who lack the ability to work, because the village lacks the workforce required for the inhabitants to survive. This will even have a bad effect on the kinsmen system and family relations.

"Immigration from rural regions to the cities also culminates in the transformation of cities and the occurrence of the shanty town phenomenon. People have to live in tin-roofed shacks and this can badly damage the cities' features. When a villager leaves his home for the city, he is not adapted to city work, which requires skills. He will, therefore, have to do menial work such as selling cigarettes or coupons or construction work."

----- Social and Economic Effects of Immigration -----

The effects of immigration on emigrant-sender villages and immigrant-acceptor cities has different dimensions, since villagers usually immigrate to big cities, especially to the capital city, and as a result of the population boom, economic, social and cultural planning is practically impossible.

In this regard, Sheikhavandi said, "If any balance between the existing possibilities and immigration is to be established, more emphasis needs to be placed on population growth, so that we can find the opportunity and possibility to establish urban infrastructure and distribute the population in different areas instead of dispatching them to metropolitan cities like Tehran.

"Such a policy has not, unfortunately, been enacted up to now, and as a result a few cities such as Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tabriz, have been flooded with immigrants. Tehran, the most exposed city, is overflowing with immigrants.

"On the other hand, immigration affects institutions such as the country's education system. For example, because officials were heedless of the future, proper schools were not built. We did not institutionally plan for the future of our cities. As a result, most of our schools had to use two and even three shifts. And the classes got crowded. The same thing happened in hospitals. As a matter of fact, places with higher populations have more diseases. The population is distributed in such a way that our doctors are unable to treat people. This is one of the problems that we have not prepared for."

---- Ways to Prevent Immigration ----

In order to change the immigration trend, we do not necessarily have to decrease the cities' attractions, but we can, instead, increase the rural areas' appeal by providing appropriate health and education services, organizing recreational centers, and creating employment opportunities.

Mechanizing agriculture and setting up modern institutions related to activities in this sector could also prevent immigration.

Mohajer says, "Providing health care opportunities is also necessary. When a villager does not have access to a hospital in his village and the adjacent villages, he has to come to the city. The access to the doctor and medical facilities encourages him to stay in the city.

"There should be a solution for the seasonal immigration of villagers, so that their leisure time -- when they do not have to work on the farm -- can be filled with work in cooperative organizations or studying at educational centers."

Dr. Sheikhavandi also emphasized that something must be done to fill the youths' leisure time, saying that the number of cultural centers, recreation areas and cinemas should be increased in provinces in proportion to population growth.

He considers decreasing investment in Tehran as one of the other ways to prevent immigration, saying, "Instead of concentrating the opportunities and facilities in Tehran and other populous cities and creating attractions in provinces, investments should be directed to deprived regions and places where there is the possibility of maintaining the population. Capital should be infused proportionally to population distribution."

Sheikhavandi advocates organizing a board to assess cities' capacities in order to see which cities enjoy the needed potentialities, adding that this board then should decide to establish facilities such as hospitals and recreational centers in those places.