Oakland logged it’s 48th homicide of the year over the weekend (story here). Last year, the city had 28 homicides at this time. Two thoughts come to mind.
1) There is just no way that the good people of California could elevate Jerry Brown from the mayor of the state’s most crime-ridden city to be the top cop. If they do, they deserve what they get. And I may become the Flashreport’s new Texas correspondent.
2) This story is another reason we need to get control over our borders. The man who was killed the other day was here illegally and shot by Hispanic gangs (police say that he was not involved in any gang activity.) The paper does not state that he was an illegal immigrant (of course), but he came here from Guatemala five years ago and worked in construction. His family is sending his body back to Guatemala for burial. Odd are the man was here illegally.
My point is this–his illegal status did not get him killed. But I’m sure that many of the people in the gang that shot him are also illegal immigants. If the federal government would stop abdicating its responsibility to guard the border and keep track of people once they arrive here, perhaps this man would still be alive today. Perhaps he’d be living in Guatemala or perhaps he would be here on a legal work visa. But if we’d do a better job of border patrol, we could at least do a better job of keeping the bad guys out.