You can tell what scares Democrats by what they aren't talking about. 

Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Luís Gutiérrez have indirectly given away Democratic fears.  First, Senator Schumer came out of his meeting with President Trump claiming he had offered some compromise with the president on the wall.  Gutiérrez then added:

[H]e's ready to give President Trump his signature border wall if the Republicans will agree to new legal protections for "[DREAM]ers.["]  Furthermore, he said he'd help with the construction. "I'll take a bucket, take bricks, and start building it myself," Gutiérrez told reporters in the Capitol.  "We will dirty our hands in order for the [DREAM]ers to have a clean future in America." 

We all know that Democrats are good at coordinated messaging.  Why the sudden reversal?  The wall has been the main sticking point for both sides.  Why are Democrats suddenly ready to give President Trump a victory in this regard?

The short answer is chain migration and the visa lottery.  The wall in and of itself, while obviously helpful in border security, is not the be-all, end-all.  Its real importance is that it is a visual and physical demonstration that President Trump intends to keep his promises on immigration.  If Trump gets any significant portion of the wall started, then he wins a modest political victory, and border security is enhanced a bit.  However, if recalcitrant Democrats prevent funding or delay construction, they will be the ones hurt, not President Trump.

Chain migration and the visa lottery are a completely different story.  As we all know, Democrat interest in immigration reform is in simply assuring a continuing and steady supply of new Democrat voters.  If recent immigration history demonstrated that newly minted citizens tend to vote Republican, the wall would have already been built.  Instead, chain migration and the visa lottery continue to assure a steady supply of Democrat voters of low skill. 

In his immigration speeches, President Trump always says, "Build the wall!"  Lately, he's also added chain migration and the visa lottery, along with E-Verify, to his list of immigration fixes.  Of all those immigration reforms, the loss of chain migration and the visa lottery would do the most damage to the Democrat voter import machine.  Both of those programs are responsible for a large number of unsuitable foreign arrivals who end up on public assistance or in prison and eventually as Democrat voters, legally or sometimes not.

Two things will have an impact on this discussion.  First, President Trump's administration is gaining serious momentum.  A burgeoning economy, the result of Trump's assault on egregious regulation along with the recent tax bill, are already having a positive effect on workers' wallets.  Couple that with positive employment news among some core Democrat constituencies: women's unemployment is lowest in decades, and of even more concern to Democrats, black and hispanic unemployment is the lowest ever.  This could give President Trump some legislative muscle if the GOP will get behind him.

Second and directly on the heels of the "Trump Recovery," Democrats have decided to back the concerns of illegal aliens instead of American citizens in the most public possible way: by shutting down the federal government.  For now, President Trump appears to be winning the messaging war on this, calling out Senator Schumer and the Democrats for taking the side of illegal aliens.

This is why Democrats are showing willingness to move toward President Trump on the wall.  This would be a minor political retreat, but as long as their legal supply of voters isn't cut off, they can live with it.  Schumer's and Gutiérrez's recent statements are an attempt to lock in a DACA agreement and pay for it with a minor concession regarding the wall. 

However, President Trump has some serious economic wind at his back.  Add to this the Democrats' open choice of illegals over Americans, and Trump may actually run the table and get everything he asks for on his immigration reform list.  Democrats, on the other hand, could end up with the 800K DACA "children" being given some sort of work status and funding for the wall being revisited annually.  All in all, a pretty good deal.

Keep the pressure on the Democrats.  Every 24 hours that goes by, take something else off the table.

Mike Ford is a sometime contributor to American Thinker.