A conversation I had recently with some amigos reaffirmed the fact that pushing legislation is not a game I want to get into. Legislation within the corrupt U.S. political system requires not compromises, but selling people out. I don’t mean to use the word selling figuratively. Within the chambers of Congress and the White House walls the highest bidder wins and moves legislation. And yet many liberals and progressives call these sell outs trade-offs, part of the game in which the people lose.

Take the moves on immigration reform that have gone down this week, approval from the Senate of a Bush started fence on the U.S. Mexico border and E-verify, a system that requires any federal contractor to use this particular system to ensure that employees have legal immigration status to work in the United States, a system that is hugely flawed and inaccurate. The people are being told to calm down, take these moves with a grain of salt. The problem is that while these amendments are being pushed by Republicans, what Democratic senators, hailed as leaders in the push for immigration reform, are pushing doesn’t look much better.

Senator Schumer from my state of New York is being touted as a leader and an ally in the push for comprehensive immigration reform. In fact he said that he expects there to be a reform bill ready by Labor day. What does his immigration reform vision include (besides a border fence which he voted for)?

A national worker id card containing bio-metric information like fingerprints. Now remember fingerprints are the basis for immigrants being targeted for arrest and deportation under an Obama policy and when people raised their voices against this policy we were told to calm down because it only mattered if people’s fingerprints were in the system. Voila now we have a system being pushed that would fingerprint everyone. Civil liberties orgs are against such an id program as we all should be. This is the groundwork for all undocumented to be tagged and criminalized like undesirables.