It was a rare treat and a privilege for the Butler Eagle to host a visit from U.S. Sen. Bob Casey on Tuesday morning at the Eagle’s offices on Diamond Square. The Scranton Democrat, one of only a handful of Pennsylvanians ever elected to serve a third Senate term, shed a Keystone State light on a number of national and foreign policy issues during an hour-long discussion with Eagle editorial and management personnel.

He described a sense of conflicting obligations between serving out his six-year Senate term or exploring a run for the presidency in 2020 — a decision he is being pressed to make soon.

Discussing the federal government’s 18-day shutdown, Casey said the House’s new Democratic majority leadership could easily approve the same temporary stop-gap bill that the Senate Democrats approved just before the shutdown took effect, but President Donald Trump would still have to sign it.

Trump has said he won’t sign any deal to end the shutdown if it does not include funding for the southern border wall, which the Senate measure does not.

One comment by Casey revealed a small but telling detail about how issues advance in Washington. He said he’d prefer not to bundle the security wall and the nation’s inadequate immigration policy since immigration and security are not the same thing.

“I would prefer that we narrow the debate and isolate the issues,” he said.

Bingo. There is no reason why governing must continually complicate and confuse issues by blending them.

We are witnessing an ideological transformation regarding the proposed border wall with Mexico — a barricade which at one time or another was supported by a majority of the Democratic leaders who now oppose it. The wall that candidate Trump first proposed to keep out terrorists is now being marketed by Trump as the antidote against human trafficking and illegal drugs.

There are two legislative needs. Both need to be addressed.

- A wall will help regulate illegal traffic and potential criminal and even terrorist activity at the border.

- Immigration policy reform will settle and streamline the procedures and regulations for foreigners seeking asylum, naturalization and citizenship in the United States, which always has welcomed immigrants and always should.

Two different issues. Sure, they can be bundled into one deal. But they don’t need to be. Let’s not get hung up thinking one solution depends on the other. Isolate the debate, as Casey suggests.

Casey called himself an amateur historian. Hey, all Pennsylvanians are historians, aren’t we? Most of us are sons and daughters of immigrants. The senator from Scranton is no exception. Neither is President Trump, for that matter.