In my fantasy world, a shutdown-ending compromise is easy to find.
Everyone can declare victory with the right compromise solution. Just give Trump his $5billion for "border security" with a specific fractional allocation of that amount to go toward more fencing and steel slats with spikes on top, and pair it with a similar number of dollars for expanded capacity in immigration courts, labor law enforcement, and increasing legal immigration quotas. Trade off some policy provisions, like include both a DACA fix and new deportation policy for criminal immigrants. This shouldn't be hard.
They can sit down and negotiate over the dollars, like maybe congressional democrats won't give him the full $5billion unless they get $20billion for expanding legal immigration, like immigration courts and citizenship programs to incorporate these people into the American landscape. Maybe they need to make an uneven policy provision trade, like they can't sign off on building a big scary wall unless Trump signs off a free pass for all of the DACA kids, ends family separation, and grants seasonal green cards to anyone who asks. Fine! Surely there is
some price they would accept, in order to give him his $5b. Trump is so stuck on that figure, he'll give up the farm to get it.
Because right now, it's the $5b that is the sticking point. I think democrats should just give it to him, with conditions on how it's spent, in exchange for the things that they want. It's just a matter of how many of those things they need to see included to make it a "fair" trade.
Democrats don't really care about the wall. A wall won't have a significant impact on immigration rates anyway, and at this point it's just a symbol of racism that the President of the United States has turned into his own personal Moby Dick. Yes, it's a stupid waste of money, but I think it's clear that neither party gives a rat's ass about the deficit right now. Just give him his money, and get as much or more to go along with it to actually fix our immigration system by letting people come work here legally. Trump could truthfully declare victory on getting some wall built, and democrats could truthfully say they finally got real immigration reform passed and all they had to give up was a stupid and ineffective wall that doesn't do anything anyway.
It's like negotiating with a toddler who won't take a bath unless he gets to play with a spoon in the tub. Fine, just give him the spoon and then tell him he's being a very good boy for being cooperative about bath time. You haven't really lost anything, and you've achieved your real goal with minimal compromise. You both get to feel like you've won, because the toddler is stupid and doesn't know any better.
Peanuts! That’s over 200x the annual budget of my agency.
Don't worry, it's not real money. That $5b would fund entire agencies, but is a drop in the bucket compared to our current military spending. The DoD gets almost $700 billion per year, and they could completely fund the $5b for border security and a matching $5b for immigration reform by just giving the US military the same pay raise the US civil service is getting next year: zero. The savings from that one step alone would resolve this little squabble, if it was just about finding $5billion for each side without adding to the deficit.