Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

– Voltaire

Is it wanting to commit atrocities that make you believe absurdities?

– Hugo Mercier

All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian.

– Pat Paulsen, former presidential candidate

Immigration is in the news again these days, although I can’t recall at the moment if its status is a crisis, a national emergency or just a disgrace.

I’ve always been sensitive to the emergence of immigration as a political football because I myself am a descendant of Irish immigrants. In my case, it appears that my Irish ancestors didn’t leave Ireland because they necessarily wanted to come to America so much as they came to America because Ireland wanted them out of Ireland.

I am also married to a more recent immigrant. Wendy’s family immigrated from Saskatchewan when she was but a wee lass as her Canadian parents wouldn’t have called her but my Irish ancestors might have. Her father was a mason and brought with him his bricklaying tools. Her mother was an excellent cook and brought with her the family’s best china and cookware. To best of my knowledge, neither of them smuggled any fentanyl across the Canadian border when they came to America, and neither of them came to this country to commit crimes or help Canada run up a trade deficit with the United States. Or a trade surplus, if that’s the one that’s bad.

Wendy’s father got a job working at the Challenge Creamery in Los Angeles as a deliveryman. He eventually moved his family to a house in Whittier, CA located a couple of miles from the house where I grew up, and the rest is history. Wendy’s family was welcomed to the United States and all members of the family went on to lead lawful and productive lives. Wendy’s family is white and speaks English, and while I am no expert on the current immigration situation in this country, I believe that not being white and speaking with an accent or in a foreign tongue may put you at a substantial disadvantage these days in being welcomed into the country.

While immigration is still in the news, it has been largely overshadowed by reporting on America’s raging War on Wokeness, War on Health, War on Education and War on Science. I guess that means we’ve won the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty, although I must have missed the parades and celebrations for each of those victories. Also in the news is an immigrant car maker who has been tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and corruption in America’s civil service system.

It makes a lot of sense to me that the world’s richest man should be the guy to be leading the charge against government waste, corruption and fraud which he says is preventing hard-working guys like him from earning a decent living. Rumor has it that after he has looted Social Security and Medicare, President Not-Elected Musk will turn his attention to the White House where many have suggested he’ll find fraud and corruption on a very large scale.

One thing not much in the news since the Musk Administration took over is Vice President JD Vance. When last seen he was rotating the tires on Musk’s Tesla Cybertruck and being lectured by the Pope on Catholic dogma. I’m not Catholic myself – the church I am currently not attending is the Episcopal Church, often referred to as Catholic Lite – but I’ve got to believe that having the leader of your chosen religion call you out for misrepresenting your faith is not a good thing.

Fortunately, you don’t have to look very far from the front page to find stories of regular people in this country engaged in random and unselfish acts of kindness, generosity and love. That’s where I’ll be turning my attention next week. Hell, I may even start going to church again.

Tom Tyner writes a weekly column for this newspaper.