Residency and crime

Last week John Kass wrote a column in the Chicago Tribune in which he echoed the conservative outrage at the murder of an Iowa student by an illegal immigrant. There is no question that it was a heinous crime which of itself deserves outrage and should be punished to the maximum allowed. However, I contend that the residency status of the criminal is totally irrelevant unless it can be shown that no such murders have been committed by native-born Americans or legal immigrants. A scan of the news media removes that argument.

I single out Kass' column because further in that edition of the Tribune was a paragraph about the sentencing in Texas of a presumably white, native-born Texan who shot a 3-year-old infant in a fit of road rage. I remembered that case but did not recall any of the same level of outrage for this crime. That a person should legally carry a gun and use it against an infant because someone followed him too closely is unconscionable in this country.

Perhaps an $80 billion dollar wall might have saved the college student. It would not have saved the 3-year-old or any of the hundreds of people murdered by native-born or legal-immigrant killers. Let us save our outrage and use it against all the senseless murders which stain our society.

Jack Adams

Wheeling