There are a couple of unrelated odds and ends that have recently caught my attention.

First of all, there has been much discussion in the media about the June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and some number of Russian nationals (the precise number seems to go up and down on a weekly basis).

We are told that Donald Jr. was disappointed because the Russian attorney who asked for the meeting didn’t really have some good dirt on Hillary Clinton, as advertised, but only seemed interested in talking about resuming the adoption of Russian children by American citizens.

While adoption seemed, on its face, to be an innocuous enough subject, the thing that kept gnawing at me was that while there was a ban on the adoption of Russian children by would-be American adoptive parents, that ban had been imposed by Vladimir Putin, and not by the American government.

If they wanted adoptions to resume, why would a Russian delegation be talking about a ban on Russian adoptions with Americans? Wouldn’t their time be better spent lobbying the Russian Government that imposed the ban in the first place?

Turns out the ban was imposed in retaliation for the passage by the U.S. Congress of something called the Magnitsky Act.

The Magnitsky Act involved denying specific Russian nationals allegedly connected with the death of a Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, entrance into the United States, and use of the United State banking system (and their banking accounts). Magnitsky had been investigating massive corruption allegedly involving top members of the Russian ruling cabal connected to Vladimir Putin. Lengthy investigations since have alleged that Magnitsky was tortured prior to his death.

I have tried, I really have, to avoid speculation in these columns. In this case, the dots beg to be connected.

Contrary to a narrative about the plight of unadoptable Russian children, does it make more sense to surmise that what was actually on the table was the possibility of lifting the ban on Russian adoptions in return for lifting the sanctions in the Magnitsky Act? In effect, giving specific individuals allegedly involved in the torture death of Sergei Magnitsky renewed access to the United States – and their money?

If such a quid pro quo was discussed with the Russians, in the face of an act of the United States Congress, it puts the discussions in an entirely different – and much less innocent – light.

Again, mere speculation, but it sure makes sense to me.

Then, a few days ago, a proposal was floated to reduce legal immigration to the United States by an estimated 50 percent over the next 10 years.

The plan includes a “points” system. English-speaking applicants with advanced skills would be given priority, and everybody else could wander off to the back of a bus whose capacity had been cut by 50 percent.

As I have mentioned before, I am, myself, an immigrant.

When my mom and dad applied for admission, my mother, who never attended university, had been a secretary with the British occupation forces in post-war Germany. She would, however, graduate, with high honors, from Indiana University Kokomo, when she was 72 years old.

My dad, born in 1912, never made it past primary school – he was too busy bringing in money to his widowed mother and siblings during the Great Depression.

At the time of his application for entry into the United States, he had going for him the fact that he was Northern European and, technically, spoke English. In reality, until the day he died, few people in Kokomo could figure out, through his thick Scottish brogue, what the heck he was talking about.

Beyond that, his skills consisted of driving a double-decker bus, knowing from his time on World War II troopships to put lots of ice in the drinks of American officers, and how to maintain a Bofors anti-aircraft gun.

None of these skills were in great demand in post-war America.

Nevertheless, they got in. They worked hard. They saved what they could. They paid their taxes.

They were able to send the second generation (me) through Indiana University – undergrad and law school.

In turn, I had the privilege of serving my hometown as city attorney for 25 years and four different mayors. Thereafter, their boy served for almost 10 years as an assistant, and then associate, professor at the local community college lecturing on American government and politics.

The third generation, between the missus and I, produced three children.

One is an ob/gyn serving an underserved population at Eskenazi Hospital in Indianapolis. Another is a surgeon just beginning a fellowship in critical care and trauma surgery at the University of Cincinnati. He too feels drawn to serving that same underserved population at Eskenazi, or some other Level One trauma center.

The third sibling, with a couple of master’s degrees under her belt, is a museum educator at The Children’s Museum in Indianapolis, with the fancy title of “Archeologist in Residence.”

I don’t want to sound as if I am in danger of dislocating my shoulder patting myself on the back, but I am proud of my family and the point is, some nameless immigration official 66 years or so ago made a bet. I think the return on that bet has been pretty good.

I don’t know that all of this would have been possible under the new proposed “points” guidelines.

While this is my family story, it is also the story of all of us who trace their ancestry back to someone knocking on the door asking to be let in to this country of ours.

To reduce the decision of who shall be allowed admission to a sterile exercise of toting up points is a betrayal of everything this country has come to represent.

It is a vision of America that is the product of small minds, a vision that makes each of us smaller as well.