The president is on record calling nations in Africa and Haiti “s***holes.”

Donald Trump wants to encourage more immigration from Norway. I’ll make a leap and presume he means also more from western Europe, maybe even from Asia.

The president is pushing what he’s calling a “merit-based” immigration policy. Riff-raff need not seek to enter the United States of America, under the Trump policy.

I’m thinking tonight of my grandparents. All four of them came to this country from Europe. They weren’t from the western part of the continent; they all hailed from southeast Europe — from Greece and the European portion of Turkey.

Mom’s parents were from Marmara, Turkey; Dad’s parents hailed from the Peloponnese, the southern peninsula of Greece.

I’m wondering: Were they from s***hole countries, the type that Trump has described? Would they even be allowed to enter the United States in the 21st century?

None of them was well-educated in an academic sort of way. I’m not sure they would be deemed worthy of “merit-based” admission based on their humble beginnings in southeast Europe.

But … they all came here in the early 20th century. They were model citizens. They became proud Americans. My grandparents produced 10 children: three on Mom’s side and seven on Dad’s side.

All five of their sons served in the military; three of them served in combat during World War II and the Korean War; one of the WWII combat vets was my father. One of their daughters served, too. They answered the call to arms in a manner that Donald Trump  did not. Imagine that.

I take this immigration debate seriously and quite personally. I am the grandson of immigrants who might or might not have been given the keys to their new country if they had to meet some sort of “merit-based” standard set by the current president of the United States.

Now he labels an entire continent as a place full of “s***hole” nations and suggests other Third World countries elsewhere produce citizens who are unfit for entry into the world’s greatest and — until recently — most welcoming nation.

Sad. And disgraceful.