Trump's wall is simply not important. It is a policy symbol, not a matter of substance.
His proposal to make it out of steel slats instead of concrete is also meaningless. No one cares except for Trump himself. Besides, he has been saying for a long time that he wants a wall we can see through, or drug smugglers on the other side will drop 60 pound bails of drugs on citizens' heads. (Seriously!)
I have no objection to trading the wall for DACA and therefore think it was a mistake for Nancy Pelosi to say that she would not agree to the wall even after the government reopens. Taking what the other side wants most absolutely off the table removes all incentive for them to negotiate. In the last showdown over the wall, pro-immigration Democrats vowed that they would personally break ground on the wall if only they could have protection for the Dreamers. But then Trump torpedoed the deal by insisting on major cuts to legal immigration be part of any agreement.
Trump's first proposed "compromise" of wall for DACA and reopening of government sounded at least possibly reasonable and possibly something to at least think of voting for. Once it turned out that Trump wanted major restrictions to asylum seeking, Democrats quite properly considered it totally out of the question. Any changes of that sort must be decided by normal procedures, not forced under the gun.
And now Trump has agreed to open the government for three weeks in exchange for some sort of bipartisan negotiations for a compromise on immigration. Well, long story short, it won't happen. Democrats have taken a wall off the table as an unacceptable symbol of exclusion. Given that the wall is substantively meaningless, I think this is a big mistake. And Trump rejects any passage of DACA without major immigration restrictions, which is a strict non-starter for Democrats.
Look, comprehensive immigration reform is hard. It proved impossible when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. Under the Hastert Rule, the Speaker would not introduce any measure unless it had the "majority of the majority," i.e., the majority of the Republican majority. A majority of Republicans opposed any bill that could be taken as granting "amnesty" to people who arrived illegally, even as children, so no bill including amnesty could ever pass the House. In the Senate, the filibuster forbade any measure that could not garner 60 votes, so the Democratic majority was able to block any measure that did not include an amnesty. In effect, both house had house rules preventing passage by simple majority.
Even if we removed those restrictions, comprehensive immigration reform would require long, painstaking tradeoffs hated by the more hardcore members of both parties including (at present) our President. Even if Trump were somehow convinced that the pageantry and glory of signing comprehensive immigration reform, and the bragging rights of boasting that he succeeded where Obama failed, is more important that what is actually in the bill, negotiations are going to be a long, painful haul.
A rough, DACA-for-wall trade with further changes to be deferred would strike me personally as both doable in the next three weeks and a good idea. What a shame Trump as ruled out DACA without major restrictions and Democrats have ruled out the wall altogether. And anything further has proven impossible as a matter of bipartisan compromise and will have to be passed when one party has not only the Presidency and a majority of both houses, but a 60-vote majority in the Senate -- or the filibuster will have to be abolished.*
But even then comprehensive immigration reform is going to be the result of long, hard work. It absolutely should not be the result of any actor deciding to shut down the government until his/her/ its preferred plan is passed.
And just for the record, this does not mean just Donald Trump announcing that he will shut down the government unless the budget contains not only funding for his wall, but major restrictions on immigration, as his proposed "compromise" did. It would also be improper for Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats to pass their dream plan for immigration and then shut down the government unless Republicans pass it in the Senate and President Trump signs it. I do not expect such a thing to happen, but it would be a clear abuse of power if it did happen, and I would expect both the Democrats to lose and public opinion to be against them.** And rightly so.
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*I think that is probably a good idea in the long run, but too alarming in the short run.
**And to be clear, this is what the Republican House under John Boehner attempted to do in the second Obama term. They proposed either a ransom note requiring passage of the entire Republican platform as a condition for raising the debt ceiling (admittedly only as the opening ploy in a bargaining gambit, with the expectation of ending up with less), or a menu of options with a longer extension the more of the Republican platform Obama agreed to. The attempt failed because the Freedom Caucus refused to sign off on any extension of the debt ceiling no matter what the ransom, so Boehner was forced to pass it with Democratic votes only.
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