Bangor Daily News, July 13

Many of the Canadian nurses and health care workers who staff hospitals in northern and eastern Maine grumbled about government regulations set to go into effect this month. The rules, on the books for nearly a decade but only recently activated, require that Canadians meet new visa requirements and that nurses pass a national exam.

Most have filled out the necessary paperwork and now await their certification. The problem for many is that the documents they need to cross the border aren’t likely to arrive before July 26, when the law is to go into effect. The White House says it is considering a delay in enforcement. This is necessary to ensure that Maine facilities are not short-staffed and that patients do not go untreated because their caregiver wasn’t allowed across the border.

Hospitals in Aroostook and Washington counties rely heavily on Canadian nurses and health care workers. At Calais Regional Hospital, more than one-third of the nursing staff is from Canada as is more than half the facility’s laboratory workers. The Aroostook Medical Center in Presque Isle employs about 40 Canadians. Some of these Canadian citizens live in Maine, while others cross the border every day to go to work. Crossing the border is about to become more difficult, if not impossible.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act was passed in 1996, but was dormant until heightened security concerns recently brought it back to life. Under the law, seven categories of health care professionals, but not doctors, who want to work in the United States must meet new visa requirements and nurses must be certified by the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools. Nationally, 5,000 nurses must be certified.

In Maine, some applications to the CGFNS have been processed in three weeks, some have taken nine months. One hospital in northern Maine reports that 75 percent of its nurse supervisors and 33 percent of its nurse managers have applications pending before the commission.

The solution is to delay the rule and allow nurses, some of whom have worked at the same hospital for 20 years or more, to continue to cross the border as they currently do. When the CGFNS has processed all pending applications, the rule can go forward. The White House Office of Management and Budget, under pressure from the offices of Maine’s senators as well as those from other border states, is currently considering such a proposal.

This is a common sense approach to easing the burden on a group of people that have shown they are not a terrorist threat.

Baseball struggles with rules


Herald-Star, Steubenville, Ohio, July 7

Major League Baseball’s image problems just don’t improve.

Faced with questions since the 1980s about escalating salaries, drug abuse, the cost of new ballparks, labor problems and steroid usage, the league has an act that needs to be cleaned up.

But the league often adds to its own woes by sticking to its rules.

Take the case of Keith Foulke. The Boston Red Sox reliever had an American flag put on his baseball cap as a way to support the servicemen and women serving overseas.

The league’s labor agreement says players cannot make personal changes to uniforms.

We’d agree that to maintain the proper look of a baseball team that the uniforms must all be the same.

Why not make the flag part of every uniform on every team? It might just make baseball get at least one streak off its tarnished image.

Bush plays to the headlines


Hufvudstadsbladet, Helsinki, Finland, July 13

Newsweek writes that U.S. authorities are considering new legislation in the event that the presidential elections have to be postponed in November because of a terrorist attack.

Even mere preparation of postponement is a wildly exaggerated response. At the same time, the United States is urging the Iraqi government not to postpone the planned elections in the chaotic country in January. Attacks in Iraq happen every day the United States, on the other hand, has not once been targeted since 9-11. The logic simply falters. Or has the possibility of a terrorist attack against the United States suddenly increased?

That’s the impression one gets when listening to President Bush’s rhetoric. But on the other hand, Bush’s image leans on a perceived determination in the war on terrorism, and that’s where his popularity comes from.

During the campaign, it’s in his interest to bring a possible terrorist threat to the foreground … he will not mind frequent headlines about possible terrorist threats.

Democrats threaten free trade


Svenska Dagbladet, Stockholm, Sweden, July 12

President Bush has rightly been criticized for his protectionist steel tariffs, but Sen. John Kerry constitutes a far bigger threat against free trade, particularly with his vice presidential selection Sen. John Edwards.

Kerry sounds like a protectionist in his rhetoric, but at least he has not voted that way in Congress. Edwards, on the other hand, has been more inclined to talk and act as a true friend of border obstacles.

To the surrounding world, there is a reason to think of what role the United States should play on the global stage if Kerry and Edwards are elected in November.

Where the fight against terrorism is concerned, not much will likely change, but the effect of the duo’s tax proposals and trade policy is hardly favorable to an economy that has, in many respects, been the engine of the world. And the efforts to introduce products from the world’s poorest countries to the global market would be far more at risk with a pair of protectionists in the White House.

That would be a tragedy.