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A dangerous idea: legislation to punish a group of people

Last week, the Congress of the United States approved –I think- a law imposing a high tax on the bonuses that AIG executives received, so that those executives are forced, so to speak, to return the money.

I am not going to write about AIG. It has been already done ad nauseam. But I am going to write about what I think it is the real scandal: legislators approving sanctions for an specific group of people, even if those sanctions mean to cancel contracts signed in good faith and imposing laws retroactively.

When I heard on the news about Congress adopting a series of measures regarding AIG bonuses, I immediately asked myself how much longer it will take Congress to pass laws or restrictions against another group Congress deems as “undesirable.”

My reasoning was simple: if it is wrong for business people to receive high bonuses at a time of bad economy, how much longer it will be before somebody feels it is wrong for another group, let’s say, immigrants, to receive money (regardless of the amount) because we are in bad economic times?

I was surprised, but not totally, when just a few minutes later I was listening to the radio and a well-known nationally syndicated talk-show host was saying “we” should press Congress to pass a law requesting each family to verify the legal status of each member of that family before any member of the family receives any payment, including salaries.

This talk-show host even invited his audience to call Congress to push his idea of a law to transform each member of a family into a government informant about the other members of the family, or paying the consequences if the family decides not to cooperate.

I have to confess I was disturbed not only by the proposal but also for the number of people who immediately called to express their support for the idea. In fact, I was so disturbed that I decided not to listen anymore, because I began to think about the many undesirable consequences of this idea.

Later that same day I was at a meeting with a group of Latino immigrants and, to my surprise, many of them were in fact in favor of a law forcing some immigrants to return money. Some of them were even in favor of forcing immigrants to denounce undocumented immigrants in their own families.

It was useless to argue about the Constitution of the United States and its Bill of Rights, because, once again, I was told in this bad economic times you don’t need ethics and morality.

It is true there are times of extreme circumstances where you will need extreme measures and extreme actions in order to survive. Think, for example, about what the Uruguayan rugby team did when their plane crashed into the Andes in October 1972.

What extremes we will reach here and now? After all, what just a short time ago seemed unthinkable and impossible now is an everyday reality.

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