Illegal immigrant breeds lawlessness

Huntsville police officer Daniel Howard Golden's death would be every much a tragedy even if an American citizen had killed him with a properly registered firearm. The murder suspect is an undocumented Mexican, who police said used forged identification papers of a dead person, and who had no legitimate access to a firearm. The circumstances do, however, make you wonder what role the federal government's illegal open-borders policy may have had in the killing.

Officer Daniel Howard Golden, 27, died Monday outside a Hispanic grocery/restaurant when he answered a domestic disturbance call. Police charged 31-year-old Benito Albarran with capital murder. Police are not sure if the suspect worked at the store, but they suspect he had a connection.

Lawlessness breeds lawlessness. When officials don't enforce one law, all laws suffer disrespect. Millions of illegal aliens have overrun our borders because we embrace their work ethic. We pretend not to know that they are illegal because we don't wish to have that information.

Verification of legal immigrant workers is a farce. Local police don't even bother arresting them until they commit a crime. That's because of federal government policy, not U.S. law or indifference. The Immigration Act of 1990 sets an annual immigration ceiling of 675,000 per year. That includes immigrants from all over the world and not just people from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.

It's easy to place blame when tragedy occurs. It's easier to hold every individual responsible for his or her actions. Some of the responsibility for what happened in Huntsville, however, belongs with the federal government and its lax enforcement of U.S. law. Americans should demand the law be enforced or that Congress enact changes to reflect the reality of immigration.