I don’t know why I care about immigrants, illegal or otherwise. But I do. Mostly, I think the ones coming over the southern border are escaping oppressive Latin American regimes and are actually seeking asylum, or they’re just looking for a better life and know there’s plenty of work doing things young white men and women deign to do, like dig and cut grass. And yeah, there’s probably a criminal or two thrown in for good measure, but we’ve got a convicted felon running for president so welcome to the country.

And firing up our engines to deport 10 or eleven million people currently living in the country seems a colossal waste of energy, but that’s being proposed and it’s pretty much in keeping with our history. We repatriated Mexicans in the 30s. We gathered up the Japanese in World War II. And over the years we’ve passed laws targeting, the Irish, the Italians, and the Chinese. We’ve owned slaves and passed Jim Crow laws after they were freed. And there were unspoken rules about Jews and Catholics for years. And Native Americans were slaughtered wholesale and moved around at our convenience. And through all of that most Americans just didn’t care.

It’s hardly what I’d call an enlightened past and makes the Statue of Liberty seem like a false god. But maybe enlightenment isn’t what people want. After all, caring about immigration and the like in today’s conversations means you’re “woke” and that’s a pejorative term. So, durn, all this time I thought caring about the unfortunate and the oppressed meant you were a good Christian and a good person. Just goes to show you what I know. I wonder how you turn that off?