Huei-Ju “LuLu” Yen has been banished from the United States for five years. She was a student at the University of Maine at Farmington.

Her crime: She wrote a free column for the Franklin Journal and then accepted reimbursement for expenses. On her way back to Maine after visiting her family in Taiwan, Yen was detained after U.S. Customs officials found a stub from the expense check in her baggage.

Yen was here on a 10-year tourist visa that does not allow her to work. She wrote the columns while enrolled in the university’s creative writing program.

Immigration officials said the check was an illegal stipend.

Maine, at the direction of Gov. John Baldacci, has identified the development of a “creative economy” as a key component to assuring the state’s financial security.

But there’s more to the idea than just encouraging arts centers and graphic designers. To build a creative economy requires the state to become a destination for the best thinkers and most creative personalities from around the country and around the world.

For the plan to work, Maine must be a destination for biologists, painters, theologians, mathematicians, entrepreneurs and even writers, searching for the unique environment and experiences that state has to offer. We must create a community that welcomes their enterprise and, as the name suggests, their creativity.

That openness, however, runs counter to many of the strong-arm enforcement tactics and border regulations of the post-Sept. 11 United States.

Ornery regulations are staunching the flow of people, products, ideas and even religion along the border with Canada, which is the state’s largest trading partner. A Mainer near Quebec, according to the Associated Press, is facing two stiff fines for crossing the border while the checkpoint was closed so he could go to church.

That doesn’t sound like an invitation to even visit Maine from abroad, much less help us develop a creative economy or improve international business relationships.

Sen. Susan Collins and Yen’s fans in Farmington are working to have her readmitted, but the outcome of those efforts is uncertain.

Yen has been caught up in this, when all she really did was write a column for a local newspaper. She often wrote about her adoptive community and the American dream.

We wonder if the message will be so positive the next time she writes about the United States.


AmeriCorps funding
When President Bush signed the bloated conglomeration that was the omnibus spending legislation a week ago, he gave a major boost to AmeriCorps.

AmeriCorps, although troubled in the past by managerial problems at the national level, is a success in communities around the country. It’s a great program that provides money for college to students who are willing to do volunteer work.

The legislation, in a show of bipartisan support for the program, provides $441 million, an increase of $167 million. The new funding will allow AmeriCorps to expand to a record 75,000 student-volunteers.

We maintain our opposition to funding government’s activities with legislation that ties thousands of unrelated programs, agencies and services together, and then gives lawmakers a take-it-or-leave-it choice.

But we are relieved that AmeriCorps will get the money needed to continue its good works in our communities.
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