Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer claimed January 10 that President Donald Trump is weakening on immigration reform and then threatened a 2018 government shutdown unless a DACA amnesty is added to the funding bill.

“A resolution of the DACA issue must be part of a global deal on the [2018 government] budget, we cannot wait, we cannot tolerate delay,” he said January 10, without formally threatening to block the budget if he does not get the huge and costly DREAMAct amnesty for 3.25 million illegals.

Schumer used his speech to suggest that Trump is backing off his popular immigration priorities. Trump, said Schumer:

appeared [on Tuesday] to endorse a narrow deal to protect the dreamers, leaving the thornier issues for a debate on comprehensive immigration reform … Of course, the devil is in the details, but we Democrats have repeated time and time again that we’re ready, willing and eager to support effective, practical border security measures in a deal that enshrines DACA into law. The president yesterday seemed to agree with that.

Schumer claimed Trump made his concessions are the White House meeting on immigration, even though Trump used the meeting to show broad GOP support for his policy of building a border wall, ending chain migration and ending the visa lottery.

Schumer opened his speech by wrapping his amnesty demand in a series of easy-to-resolve budget demands, such as funding for health care. But he also made tougher demands, including a federal bailout of ruined union-run retirement programs. Collectively, the pension plans are roughly $60 billion in the hole.

After listing his spending demands, he offered his amnesty-for-less-spending trade to the GOP’s business-first wing, saying, “even on the most challenging issue far, the fate of the dreamers, there appears to be a path forward.”

According to Schumer, the border wall does not count as “effective, practical border security.” Schumer said that Trump:

backed off his demand that a DACA deal include an expensive and ineffective border wall across the entire length of the southern border.

In contrast, numerous GOP legislators and political advocates say the GOP will wreck its chances in the 2018 election by accepting a Democrat demand for a DACA amnesty. Polls show the public opposes a no-strings amnesty and it also opposes a government shutdown that would cut benefits for Americans to deliver benefit to illegals.

On Wednesday, Schumer’s deputy, Sen. Dick Durbin, met with two GOP leaders to schedule talks over the immigration reform. The GOP leaders at the meeting included House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate GOP Whip Sen. John Cornyn. The meeting also included Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer, deputy to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

McCarthy/Cornyn/Durbin/Hoyer now in McCarthy’s office to talk DACA. No administration officials here. DACA only — Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) January 10, 2018

McCarthy used the meeting to push “for the four things that were agreed to” on Monday, said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House judiciary committee. The four items are a border wall, chain migration, and the visa lottery, plus some benefits for illegals.

A January 10 statement from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, and Sens. Tom Cotton David Perdue noted:

We applaud the president’s effort to foster an open dialogue on immigration between both houses of Congress and both political parties, as he did yesterday. With the President’s guidance, this diverse group agreed to four key items. The current negotiations will focus on a solution to the DACA situation, increased border security, ending chain migration, and eliminating the outdated Diversity Visa Lottery. We feel it’s important to recognize that border security is more than just infrastructure. Enforcement authorities must be improved so that federal law officers can protect law abiding American citizens and immigrants. Ultimately, these things must be addressed simultaneously in order to solve the underlying problem from reoccurring in the future.

Schumer also used his Wednesday speech to reject one face-saving solution for Democrats — the delegation of the issue to the courts. That option was created Monday night when a California court declared that the federal government must provide work-permits to the 670,000 DACA illegals.

Schumer responded:

The ruling last night in no way diminishes the urgency of resolving the DACA issue … a higher court can quickly overturn it … The only way to guarantee the legal status for dreamers is to pass DACA protections into law and to do it now.

The Democrats are making their demand for a quick, no-strings amnesty in the face of hostile polls, the 2016 election, and President Donald Trump’s much-repeated demand that any package deal must include funding for the wall, and also end chain migration and the visa lottery.

Schumer’s repeated demands for amnesty is intended to wear down GOP support for Trump’s immigration plans, and is support by established media outlets, which are eager to portray Trump as confused, and also to minimize coverage of the GOP’s support for ending chain migration.

Chain migration roughly doubles the annual inflow of migrants, and so adds more cheap workers to the labor pool and more government-dependent voters to the electorate. That steady inflow has gradually turned several middle-class states — especially California and New Jersey — from pro-Republican into Democratic strongholds.

Schumer is also being pushed into a corner by his progressive base, which strongly opposes the border wall as a “trophy” for Trump, and by ethnic lobbies, whose power depends on importing more non-Americans into the United States. In December, Schumer was forced to drop his amnesty-of-shutdown threat when Trump called his bluff.

Schumer retreats on an amnesty-or-shutdown threat, giving Trump a big win. But deputy Durbin is working with business-first GOP Senators (plus billionaires' lobbying groups) on an amnesty-with-token-cameras counter to Sen. Grassley's SECURE Act. https://t.co/ATLYKKloPz — Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) December 12, 2017

Trump has the benefit of growing support in the GOP establishment for ending chain-migration and the visa lottery and is also backed by polls showing that Americans strongly oppose a Democratic-style no-strings amnesty.

Polls show that Trump’s American-first immigration policy is very popular, even as industry-funded. For example, a poll of likely 2018 voters shows two-to-one voter support for President Donald Trump’s pro-American immigration policies, and a lopsided four-to-one opposition against the cheap-labor, mass-immigration, economic policy pushed by bipartisan establishment-backed D.C. interest-groups.

Business groups and Democrats tout the misleading, industry-funded “Nation of Immigrants” polls because they which pressure Americans to say they welcome migrants, including the roughly 670,000 ‘DACA’ illegals and the roughly 3.25 million ‘dreamer’ illegals.

Four million Americans turn 18 each year and begin looking for good jobs in the free market.

But the federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually accepting 1 million new legal immigrants, by providing work-permits to roughly 3 million resident foreigners, and by doing little to block the employment of roughly 8 million illegal immigrants.

The Washington-imposed economic policy of economic growth via mass-immigration floods the market with foreign labor, spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.

The cheap-labor policy has also reduced investment and job creation in many interior states because the coastal cities have a surplus of imported labor. For example, almost 27 percent of zip codes in Missouri had fewer jobs or businesses in 2015 than in 2000, according to a new report by the Economic Innovation Group. In Kansas, almost 29 percent of zip codes had fewer jobs and businesses in 2015 compared to 2000, which was a two-decade period of massive cheap-labor immigration.

Because of the successful cheap-labor strategy, wages for men have remained flat since 1973, and a large percentage of the nation’s annual income has shifted to investors and away from employees.