Happy Birthday Mary............Rest in Peace

I am not normally one to voice my political views, but last year when a former co-worker Mary Nagle was brutally raped and murdered in her New City, NY home by Ronald Herrera (an illegal immigrant day laborer), it really hit home. I wasn't very close with Mary, but I saw her on a daily basis for three years and she was always kind and helpful when I needed her assistance with work matters. Her murder trial began last week.

I remember the day my wife Jenn and I heard about Mary's murder. We got up on Saturday to have breakfast like it was any other day, turned on the TV and heard Mary's name on the news. As we watched the story, we were in shock and immediately called former co-workers to see if it was true. At the time, we lived in Northern NJ (5 minutes from the George Washington Bridge) and there were always day laborers waiting on the corner two blocks from our house. Jenn's grandparents had moved into an assisted living home, so while the house was empty, we watched over the place for a couple of years until something was decided as to what wanted to be done with the house. After we saw what happened to Mary, I made sure that Jenn (who was four months pregnant at the time) was never home alone. We then decided that we needed to move. As great as it would have been to live off my salary and have Jenn stay home with Allie after she was born, we just did not feel safe there anymore.

I understand that an act such as this could happen anywhere and by anyone, so believe me I'm trying not to be racial or ethnically discriminatory. My issue is that when I came home from work at 6pm to find random people still waiting on my corner for work since that morning, or sitting on my front lawn, it made me think about the higher risk of something happening to Jenn while she was home alone. Jenn and I moved in September of last year to a more rural area. Both Jenn and I have to work to support the household, and our daughter is watched by my in-laws during the day, and I am grateful that they do this for us so that we can feel safer in our own home.

So, to finally get to my point, between what happened to this county on September 11th, and this type of horrible act on Mary, I feel that we need to do something about people being here illegally. I have no problem with immigration and people coming here to better their lives.....that's why my grandparents moved here from Italy. My issue is with the people that are here that shouldn't be. Everyone needs to be registered with the US Government in some way with a Green Card, a work visa, etc. The local governments should be kept notified of these people. If they let their visas expire, they should be picked up immediately by the local police and shipped off to the INS to have the matter resolved. Also, all these people loitering all day long on street corners should be picked up and checked for citizenship. If they are here illegally, the should be sent back to wherever they came from. Period. No excuses, no grace period. I know the contractors that go around and pick them up need to make their own ends meet and these illegal immigrants work cheap, but is it worth the risk?

Maybe I'm way off base here, but if you are here illegally, you should get out or we should make you leave. If this was done prior to April 29, 2005, Mary Nagle would have celebrated her 43rd birthday at home yesterday with her husband and two children. Instead her children had to leave the gift they made for their mother on her grave.