Democrats are threatening to hold national security hostage, potentially costing the economy billions and forcing hundreds of thousands of federal government employees to go without pay in exchange for securing legal protections for 800,000 illegal immigrants.

Congress has several days to strike a deal to keep the government funded through October. If members fail to come to an agreement by Jan. 19, all “non-essential” government employees and active U.S. military personnel will be working with out pay (including troops currently deployed). Funding for agencies like federal museums or national parks will also be cut off.

Congressional Democrats are apparently content with allowing military and law enforcement personnel to go without pay to secure protections and benefits for illegal immigrants and members of their extended families.

“The fact remains the only way to guarantee the legal status for Dreamers is to pass DACA protections into law and do it now,” Schumer said last week, according to the Washington Examiner. “For that reason, a resolution to the DACA issue must be part of a global deal on the budget.”

Pelosi has been careful to show her cards publicly, tacitly throwing her support behind a bipartisan agreement struck last week in the House and Senate that shields Dreamers from deportation, maintains chain migration, provides under 6 percent of the funding Trump asked for construction of the border wall and continues the Obama-era visa lottery program.

The Trump administration, along with a number of conservative Republicans in Congress, are against the proposal, arguing that it does too little to stop chain migration and opens the nation up to a host of economic and national security threats.

The minority leader’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Others within the Democratic caucus are more blunt as to what they are asking of Republican leadership, like Rep. Joseph Crowley of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

“If they need Democratic votes, the overall legislation needs to meet certain Democratic criteria and be reflective of the values of the Democratic caucus and what we believe are the values of the American people,” Crowley said Monday, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said Tuesday that he will vote against any budget resolution that does not include protections for Dreamers.

Shutting down the federal government has some true and lasting consequences, which is probably why it has only happened four times since the 1970s.

When Republicans were the minority party in 2013, they forced a government shutdown over Obamacare’s individual mandate after years of trying to stop the program from taking effect.

The federal government closed its doors for 16 days, and the results were far-reaching. Some 800,000 federal workers that were deemed “non-essential” were furloughed without payment and an additional 1.3 million government employees, including active duty military personnel and civilians, had to work without pay.

Military and active duty federal employees were paid retroactively in 2013, but there is no legal guarantee that these individuals will receive payment for their work in the event of a government shutdown. Members of Congress have to first come to a short-term spending agreement before agencies, like the Department of Defense, can authorize paying their employees.

“In case of a potential government shutdown, the Department of Defense has no legal authority to pay any personnel — military or civilian — for the days during which the government is shut down,” the Defense Finance and Accounting Service states.

The 2013 shutdown also cost the U.S. an estimated $24 billion in economic output, according to the Standard and Poor’s ratings agency. Every day the government shut its doors, the U.S. economy lost (in output terms) $1.6 billion a week, $300 million a day, or roughly $12.5 million per hour.

Shutdowns also temporarily stop or delay a number of other economic activities like public-private contracts, federal small business and home loans, the federal medical approval process and international trade.

The chance of Republicans and Democrats striking a budget deal that includes protections for Dreamers and their parents remained slim as of Tuesday evening.

White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short said late Tuesday afternoon that he is confident lawmakers will figure out a legislative fix for DACA, but it would be a “fairly Herculean” effort to get it done before the Friday deadline.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell urged his colleagues on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon to pass a short-term funding bill and continue discussions on how to precede with DACA.

“With no imminent deadline on immigration and with bipartisan talks well under way, there’s no reason why Congress should hold government funding hostage over the issue of illegal immigration,” McConnell said.

“Now that a federal judge has issued a nationwide injunction preventing the administration from winding down the Obama administration’s DACA program, it is clear that Congress has at least until March at a minimum, and possibly even longer, to reach a compromise,” he added.

Schumer, Pelosi and others within the Democratic Party were livid when Republicans shut the government down over Obamacare, calling them anarchists and claiming they were legitimately killing Americans.

Schumer went to the Senate floor one week before the government shut down in October to rail against then freshmen Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for threatening to shut down the government over Obamacare.

The minority leader said that Cruz was effectively holding “the American people hostage until everyone agrees with his view.”

“He wants to hold the cancer patient hostage who won’t get NIH treatments if the government shuts down. He wants to throw the construction worker out of work, who’s doing a job that’s federally funded and won’t be funded if the government shuts down. He wants to tell the recipient of social security that they may not get their checks if there aren’t enough people at the centers to send those checks and make sure they get to the right place, because he wants to shut the government down,” Schumer said.

“The senator from Texas think he has the right to trample … the needs of the American people,” he added.

One week after the government shutdown, Schumer said that Democrats would not shut down the government to secure “immigration reform.” The then-majority whip said that would be “governmental chaos.”

Pelosi equated a government shutdown to an “unthinkable tactic,” and said that Republicans using it to force Democrat concessions were “legislative anarchists.”

Former President Barack Obama flat out excoriated Republicans for doing exactly what Democrats are with DACA — tying idealogical demands to a must-pass spending bill.

“Right now, House Republicans continue to tie funding of the government to ideological demands like limiting a woman’s access to contraception or delaying the Affordable Care Act, all to save face after making some impossible promises to the extreme right wing of their party,” Obama said, according to The Washington Post.

“You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job, for doing what you’re supposed to be doing anyway, or just because there’s a law there that you don’t like.”

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

As the Trump administration gets ready to tackle illegal immigration, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission noted the impact on the black community that he believes is too often ignored.

“Black males are more likely to experience competition from illegal immigrants,” Commissioner Peter Kirsanow told The Daily Signal.

Kirsanow, an attorney in Cleveland and former member of the National Labor Relations Board, said illegal immigration is both a short-term and long-term problem for young black males.

“What happens is you eliminate the rungs on the ladder because a sizable number of black men don’t have access to entry-level jobs,” Kirsanow said. “It is not just the competition and the unemployment of blacks. It also depresses the wage levels.”

A U.S. Civil Rights Commission study in 2010 determined immigration had a disproportionate impact on black Americans, but the study didn’t distinguish illegal immigration from legal. The findings came through various field hearings with experts.

“About six in 10 adult black males have a high school diploma or less, and black men are disproportionately employed in the low-skilled labor market, where they are more likely to be in labor competition with immigrants,” the commission report says.

The report continues:

Illegal immigration to the United States in recent decades has tended to depress both wages and employment rates for low-skilled American citizens, a disproportionate number of whom are black men. Expert economic opinions concerning the negative effects range from modest to significant. Those panelists that found modest effects overall nonetheless found significant effects in industry sectors such as meatpacking and construction.

A 2012 Census Bureau report found more than half of American-born blacks did not continue their education beyond high school, while the rate was even higher for foreign-born Hispanics.

Kirsanow noted that the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the labor force participation rate for people with less than a high school diploma is 46 percent, which he argues means there is no shortage of low-skilled workers in the United States. The labor force participation rate for those with a college degree is 73.8 percent.

The NAACP, the nation’s leading black civil rights group, did not respond to The Daily Signal for this story. However, the organization has supported immigration reform that would provide legal status to illegal immigrants.

Moreover, an NAACP action alert cited research that increased immigration was actually helpful to the black community. After the Senate passed a 2013 amnesty bill, the group’s statement said:

Comprehensive immigration reform must focus on the basic American principles of preserving family unity, opposing wasteful spending, and protecting and promoting human and civil rights, human dignity, and fairness. It must also be very aware of the economic impact any new policies will have on the American people: that is why the NAACP was pleased to learn of studies which have found that more often than not, Latino immigrants and African-Americans fill complementary roles in the labor market. The study, by the Immigration Policy Center released in June of this year concludes that in metropolitan statistical areas, the increase of the Latino immigrant experience significantly raises wages, lowers unemployment, and elevates job creation for African-Americans.

The Immigration Policy Center is a research arm of the American Immigration Council, an immigrants’ rights advocacy group.

The Congressional Black Caucus also did not respond to inquiries from The Daily Signal. However, the group of African-American House members, all Democrats, has previously supported comprehensive immigration reform proposals, stating on its website:

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus unanimously support Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation that provides a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants currently living in America and particularly for the more than 3 million immigrants of African descent.

Kirsanow contends that certain politicians and advocacy groups are more concerned with advancing the Democratic Party.

“Some people are putting party preference over the needs of their constituents,” he said. “The [Congressional Black Caucus] styles themselves as protecting and enhancing the interest of black Americans. The problem is that black workers are being ignored. So, there is another agenda at work.” (For more from the author of “How Illegal Immigration Harms Black Americans, According to Civil Rights Commissioner” please click HERE)

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Four members of Congress are calling on the Obama administration to quickly address the recent spike in illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, the four lawmakers ask the administration to “take immediate action and mobilize all available resources of the department to stop the ongoing surge of illegal immigration at the southwest border.”

The letter was sent Thursday by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., along with Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. Grassley and Goodlatte lead each chamber’s judiciary committees.

According to the letter, the lawmakers believe the immigration surge is connected to the U.S. presidential election.

“Numerous media reports indicate that this surge is a large-scale effort to enter the United States before this year’s presidential election,” the letter states. “The onslaught of illegal immigration reflects continued efforts by aliens from Central America—El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala—to overwhelm our limited resources at the border, which inevitably results in the release of tens of thousands of removable aliens within the United States.”

The letter also states that “thousands” of Haitians and Africans are gathering in two Mexican cities, Tijuana and Mexicali, and “asserting dubious claims of asylum [to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers], which will practically guarantee their entry.”

In the last fiscal year, according to the letter, 408,870 illegal immigrants were found by the Border Patrol attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Of those apprehended, more than 77,000 were members of so-called ‘family units,’ which represents an increase of 95 percent over [fiscal year] 2015 figures, and nearly 60,000 were unaccompanied alien minors, which reflects a 49 percent increase over the previous fiscal year,” the letter reports.

Currently, the 40,000 illegal immigrants are being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The letter warns that this record number could easily reach 47,000 in the very near future.

“Without additional funding, ICE likely will release thousands of those detained into the United States, many of whom are criminals, who will abscond and hide from authorities,” the letter states.

Goodlatte, Gowdy, Grassley, and Sessions are calling on Homeland Security to immediately address this issue. They noted the department abruptly canceled a briefing last week with congressional staff, leaving questions about the recent surge unanswered.

“It has come to light through information provided to our committees that the department may have issued a directive to limit engagement with Congress until immediately before the election,” they wrote. “Any such directive, if issued, would be an unacceptable political ploy and a serious infringement of Congress’ oversight authority under the Constitution. We fully expect that such a directive, if issued, would be immediately rescinded.”

David Inserra, a homeland security expert at The Heritage Foundation, believes this is yet another instance that illustrates President Barack Obama’s lack of action to address the country’s immigration policy.

“The Obama administration’s failure to enforce our immigration laws and ongoing promises of amnesty or legalization by policymakers have encouraged continuing waves of illegal immigration,” Inserra said in an email to The Daily Signal. “Until the U.S. redoubles the enforcement of its immigration laws and provides ICE and other immigration agencies with the resources they need, the U.S. will keep struggling with the surges of illegal immigration we have seen and continue to see at our borders.” (For more from the author of “What’s Causing the Surge of Illegal Immigration? Lawmakers Want Answers and Action” please click HERE)

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