Foreign doctors and foreign nurses have been a godsend. We are grateful. Enough said. And now the obvious questions: Why can’t America produce enough doctors and nurses to meet our own needs? When Maine kids are moving away to get better-paying jobs, why are we giving away some of our best-paying jobs?

When my grandson applied to medical school, he was a summa cum laude graduate with high medical board scores. He applied to six schools; he was accepted to one. That’s the kind of competition American kids are facing. Why is this happening? Because we haven’t built enough medical schools to train our own citizens. We have aging boomers and a soaring population growth, and like all the deteriorating infrastructure in this country, we haven’t invested in the foundation that builds opportunity for our own people.

Our government would rather import foreign-trained nurses and doctors because we don’t have to pay for their training. And so we steal well-educated professionals from poor countries. Shame on us! According to the Financial Times of London, Aug. 2, 2001, more African doctors, engineers and scientists are working in the U.S. than in Africa. And the U.N. calls “brain drain” the greatest threat to African development.

Instead of priding ourselves on our tolerance for diversity, which gets to be increasingly inane, let’s be concerned about this shocking failure of our educational infrastructure. And let’s get American kids, from reservations, ghettos, minority and rural neighborhoods – and the middle class – trained for these professions.

Doris T. Watkins

Bangor