Besides taking jobs from American workers, illegal immigration

Host: The sun was setting over the borderlands, a burning orange disc slowly sinking into a horizon of dust, steel, and sorrow. The wind carried the smell of dry earth, of asphalt still hot from the day, of a world that worked and bled in silence. On one side of the fence, the American flag flapped in the wind; on the other, a cluster of makeshift tents leaned against each other like the weary — families, dreamers, runaways from hunger and hope alike.

Jack and Jeeny stood on a hill overlooking it all. The evening light painted their faces in gold and shadow. Between them, the air was thick with something unspoken — the tension of belief, the heaviness of truth.

Jeeny unfolded a slip of paper she’d been carrying in her notebook and read aloud, her voice carried by the desert wind:

Jeeny: “Jan Ting once said, ‘Besides taking jobs from American workers, illegal immigration creates huge economic burdens on our health care system, our education system, our criminal justice system, our environment, our infrastructure, and our public safety.’”
She paused. “That’s one way to see it. But it’s not the whole picture.”

Jack: “It’s the realistic picture,” he said, his voice firm, the kind of tone that has long stopped apologizing. “You can’t build a house on empathy and ignore the cost of the bricks. The system’s breaking, Jeeny. Hospitals are overcrowded. Schools are stretched thin. It’s not cruelty to admit that — it’s honesty.”

Host: The sun dipped lower, casting long shadows that stretched across the desert floor. The sound of a distant truck engine drifted through the air, a reminder of industry and burden, of movement without rest.

Jeeny: “Honesty without compassion is just another border, Jack. You’re talking about systems. I’m talking about people. When a mother crosses a desert carrying her child, she’s not thinking about infrastructure — she’s thinking about survival.”

Jack: “And when a father loses his job because wages drop or factories move, he’s thinking about survival too. You talk like empathy is free. It’s not. Every policy has a price tag.”

Host: A gust of dusty wind rose, rattling the chain-link fence below. The metal hummed like an instrument tuned by pain.

Jeeny: “The price of compassion is never higher than the price of cruelty. You think closing borders will protect dignity? It just hides suffering out of sight. You can’t stop migration by building walls — only by understanding why people risk their lives to climb them.”

Jack: “Because they want better lives. Sure. But who doesn’t? The world is full of broken nations, Jeeny. Are we supposed to save everyone? You know that’s impossible.”

Jeeny: “No. But we can stop pretending that saving no one is somehow more rational. You call it impossible; I call it necessary.”

Host: The light began to fade, the sky turning the color of old bruises — violet and rust. A border patrol vehicle passed below, its lights flashing, a silent reminder that philosophy does not stop the machinery of law.

Jack: “You’re talking ideals in a world that runs on limits. Look around. The schools near the border — they’re overcrowded. Teachers burned out. Hospitals underfunded. Law enforcement stretched thin. These aren’t abstract problems. They’re real.”

Jeeny: “And yet, who’s picking the crops, Jack? Who’s cleaning the offices, building the houses, caring for the elderly? The same people your system calls a burden. America runs on invisible hands, and then pretends it doesn’t know their names.”

Jack: “That’s not exploitation — that’s economics. Supply and demand. The system offers opportunity; they take it. But there’s a difference between opportunity and chaos.”

Jeeny: “Chaos doesn’t come from people crossing borders, Jack. It comes from those who draw them without conscience. The economy didn’t collapse because of the poor — it collapses because of greed. But blaming the migrant is easier. He can’t fight back.”

Host: The air grew colder now. The first stars appeared, faint and trembling above the desert. Jeeny folded her arms, her eyes distant, remembering something unseen.

Jeeny: “When I was a child,” she said softly, “my mother told me about her friend Maria — she crossed the border with nothing but her daughter and a rosary. She cleaned houses for twenty years. Paid taxes under someone else’s name. Never got sick because she couldn’t afford a doctor. When she died, no one claimed her body. But her daughter? She became a nurse. She saves lives every day. Was Maria a burden too?”

Jack: “No,” he said after a long silence. “She was one person doing the right thing. But systems can’t run on exceptions.”

Jeeny: “Maybe it’s the systems that need to learn from exceptions.”

Host: The wind howled now — a sound like memory. The night was fully born, and the border lights below blinked, red and white, endless as heartbeat monitors.

Jack: “You know what bothers me most?” he said quietly. “I’m not heartless, Jeeny. I know these people aren’t the enemy. But every country that’s ever tried to open its arms to everyone has fallen apart. Civilization depends on order. And order means boundaries — literal and moral.”

Jeeny: “Boundaries without mercy aren’t order, Jack — they’re cages. A civilization that guards its walls more fiercely than its conscience is already falling apart.”

Host: Their voices were no longer raised, but the air between them was electric — a current of truth, pain, and impossible reconciliation.

Jack: “So what do you want then? No borders? No laws? Just faith that the world will sort itself out?”

Jeeny: “No. I want us to remember that laws were made to serve people, not the other way around. You can protect a nation and still protect humanity. The two aren’t enemies — unless you make them so.”

Host: The silence that followed was deep and heavy, like the pause between thunder and rain. Jack lit another cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating his eyes — tired, uncertain, human.

Jack: “Maybe the devil’s trick,” he murmured, “is convincing us that compassion and security can’t coexist.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe our task,” she replied, “is to prove they can.”

Host: A train horn sounded in the distance — long, mournful, fading toward tomorrow. The stars now burned above them, countless and indifferent. Jeeny looked up, her voice barely a whisper:

Jeeny: “Borders divide land, Jack. Not souls.”

Jack: “And yet it’s the souls that pay the price.”

Host: They stood there, side by side, not as enemies but as two weary travelers staring at a fence that ran deeper than the soil — a fence built of fear, of hunger, of all the ways humanity forgets its reflection.

As the night deepened, the lights along the border shimmered, casting thin, trembling lines of gold on the wire — a reminder that even in separation, there remains connection. And though neither of them spoke again, the silence between them felt less like division… and more like the fragile beginning of understanding.