Right Livlihood - Possible bad intention of others
Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 12:44 pm
Hi there. I have an ethical dilemma facing me and I would appreciate some guidance. I live in Antigua in the Caribbean. I am a lawyer. The government of Antigua has taken the decision to commence an economic citizenship program to raise money for the country. Antigua has visa free travel to Europe, Canada and many other countries. The idea of the program is essentially to sell citizenship to wealthy people in other countries such as the Middle East, Russia, China where there is no visa free travel. Wealthy people will buy the citizenship and get an Antigua passport to allow them visa free travel. As a lawyer, these wealthy people will come to me to ask me to make the citizenship application on their behalf. The government will put each applicant through a stringent international due diligence process to ensure that they are suitable for citizenship. Amy job will be to fill out the application forms and submit them. What has been on my mind is that it is not possible to read the minds and true intentions of any particular applicant and it is possible that an applicant that I assist in making application for citizenship and obtaining an Antigua passport, may have bad intentions and use that passport to enter a country and commit heinous acts and hurt people including terrorist acts. I understand that Buddhism requires right livelihood where the means by which we earn our living does not do harm to others. My question is, if I undertake this type of work, and make applications for people applying for economic citizenship, will I be breaking the right livelihood rule? I have thought about this issue a lot but I am unable to come to a conclusion and would love some guidance. Thank you.