A country with a history of corruption and bribery has made great efforts via education and

prosecution to conduct government business in an open and fair way. The country has made
considerable progress. As part of its reform, the country overhauled its visa procedures for
foreigners wanting to live in the country. In the previous corrupt environment, people with
money would secretly pay off a government employee to have their visa application
approved quickly, while other visa applications took much longer. Now the government has
made the application procedure transparent and established a new procedure in law. The
new procedure offers two visa tracks, the "Regular Track", which does not require any
payment, and the "Premium Track", which requires a US $10,000 payment. The Regular
Track takes just as long to process a visa application as an application without a bribe took
before the reforms. The Premium Track moves along just as quickly as a visa application
with a bribe took before the reforms. Most people wanting to immigrate to the country
cannot afford the Premium Track.

What are the issues of integrity, ethics and law posed in the case study? What options does
the country have, and what should it do and why?
ANS: The scenario is such that a previously corrupt country, in an attempt to enhance the
transparency in their actions chose to reform multiple services including how they processed
visas. Prior to the reform, it was such that visas generally took a long time to be processed
and so some people resorted to paying Govt. employees under the table so as to have their
visas processed faster. After the reform, the government came up with two tracks via which
visas can be attained. The first was a normal track which took the same time to get processed
as a non-paid visas prior to the reform and the premium track wherein the visas could be
attained as fast as they were processed prior to the reform in the corrupt route.

Law and ethics are related, since they both reflect values and guide behaviour, but are not the
same thing. In certain situations, law seems to allow unethical, harmful behaviour, while in
others, flawed laws give raise to the question of whether people should comply with them at
all.

Ethics is defined as “the attempt to arrive at an understanding of the nature of human values,
of how we ought to live, and of what constitutes right conduct” (Norman, 1998) while integrity
is defined as “consistency between beliefs, decisions and actions, and continued adherence to
values and principles” (Malan, 2007). Law is a system of rules which is recognized by society
and enforced through sanctions of some sort and is different from integrity and ethics.
“Ethics” are hence principles that guide behaviour, while “integrity” suggests that one should practice
ethical principles in daily life , rather than preaching an ideal and then doing something contradictory

The issue:
The main issue to be dealt with via this case study would be whether the new post-reform visa
laws basically managed to legalize a practice that is essentially unethical.
The stakeholders to such an occurrences are both, the government as well as the people. The
governments realization that they can in fact exploit the situation of people’s urgency and
willingness to pay to attain the visa faster could have been the reason as to why they legalized
this form of corruption under the veil of the premium track. The people themselves also, by
virtue of resorted to bribing authorities rather than actively raising their voice against the delay
in the issuance of visas also contributed to the issue arising.

The concept of being ethical and the legality of a particular scenario can be conflicting, as is in
the case at hand. Here, after the reforms, the concept of making a premium track for attaining
a visa with a payment is in fact a practice that is quite legal in many countries and practiced
widely across the globe. This practise can hence not be claimed to be illegal owing to the fact
that there is clear transparency in it. The amount that is extracted can be considered as due
payment for the government employees who will have to put a larger amount of effort for
processing functions.

According to Locke’s and Kant’s approach to law, which is at the basis of many legal systems,
“Law should protect people’s rights from being infringed, so as long as people do not infringe
on the rights of others, they should be free to act as they want.”

Hence, as long as the rights of the other applicants aren’t infringed, this system cannot be
claimed to be illegal. This can be justified since there exists two modes of visa application, and
there is no literature that points to saying that only those who have applied through the premium
track will be granted visas. The only difference is with regards to the amount it takes for the
visa to come through.
Form the ethical and hence moral point of view, such a premium track will lead to providing
those who have disposable pecuniary privilege an easier access to the company without taking
into the consideration any exigency that might be the very reason behind them choosing to
immigrate to the country.
From an ethical point of view, it can be claimed that such a reform seeks to legalize an unfair
arrangement. The law seems to allow unethical conduct that is extremely harmful. This will
enable the proliferation of inequality and hence aid in enhancing global injustice. Such a
practice is entirely unfair on ethical and moral grounds, but its legality still cannot be
questioned.

 Whether the country is acting or should act with integrity and how this how that affects
people’s view of the law.
(Dobel, 1999, 2016); defines integrity as incorruptibility; honesty; impartiality; accountability.
In the current scenario, the issue to be dealt with and given emphasis on is with respect to
whether the concept of providing the premium track is corruption itself but with a legal blanket
over it. Corruption by definition dishonest and/or fraudulent activity, here following the
reforms the premium track established in fact provides transparency to the process of attaining
visas, though it exemplifies a very unfair practice that will heighten the wide between the rich
and the poor. But, there is clear partiality from the part of the government to those who are able
to those have resources to utilize the premium method.

There are multiples points of view by virtue of which such a practice can be criticised. The first
is how it exacerbates inequality. It is a recognized fact that there exits inequality in wealth
across the world, hence enabling some individuals to pay such amounts for the purpose of visas
while others don’t have enough for three square meals. The premium track visa programs
exacerbate rather than alleviate the impact of pre-existing economic inequality by actively
distorting the individuals’ access to live in the country were they may be able to feel safer and
prosper. Thus it can be observed that such a premium track exacerbates inequality and the
fostering of such practices will deepen global injustices

Also the lack of strong moral grounds and hence a lack of integrity of the country can be
recognized from the fact that such a legal pathway to “buying” visas and hence entry into the
company will reduce everything to merely fiscal entities in the minds of the citizens and also
those immigrating to the country. It will create a continuous thought process wherein people
will start to believe that anyone and everyone who have large amounts of disposable income
can access anything and everything within the country. This will hence remove the entire
purpose for which the transparency reform had been brought forth.
Further, the concept of immigration is not merely a physical change, there exists a mental and
emotional aspect of the individual choosing to immigrate to the country. When the access to a
country is given with emphasis on the individual’s ability to pay for it, since the scenario can
be reduced to this belief, there will exist very little concept or moral and ethical obligations an
immigrant will have to the country. This will impact the way such immigrants view the laws
of the country.
THE OPTIONS THE COUNTRY HAS.

The primary thing to be done is to ensure that the country incorporates a more ethical process
for application on visas, which could be based on factors other than on pecuniary basis. The
legality of the existing process is irrelevant owing to the extent of its lack of integrity and
ethics.
Rothstein1 argued that impartiality of government is the crucial factor for societal progress.
The government can seek to ensure that they remove any and all impediments that leads to the
belief that the government is partial, which includes removing an option of a premium track
based merely on financial inequality.
The government can reassess their policy and augment them to ensure that the visas are made
available to applicants’ depending upon the extent of their requirement for it.

Also, the fact that the visas can be provided faster had it been applied for via the premium track
establishes the fact that a faster processing is in fact possible. The government must take notice
of their duties towards all applicants and ensure that the visas be granted in the shortest time
possible.

Why thy must do so

1
Rothstein, B. (2011). The quality of government. Corruption, social trust, and inequality in international
perspective. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]),
afford the premium track. The provision of visa to such a person should be given more priority
and it might help this person lead a better life rather and could redefine X’s entire life. Hence,
the restructuring of the visa provision policy such that it is provided based on the need of the
person seeking the visa will be more sound on humanitarian grounds. Here, from an ethical
point of view it would only be accurate to provide visa to X expediently. This will also reflect
the country’s integrity in practicing a consistent application of ethical principles. The current
policy, in essence, offer privileged access to the rich. This hence reflects on the lack of an
ethical approach to the concept of providing visas.
From the first page: “integrity” suggests that one should practice ethical principles in daily life, rather
than preaching an ideal and then doing something contradictory. Here the entire point of the reforms
that had been made by the country was to ensure that there exists transparency in the functioning of the
government, and this has been achieved but the practice still lacks ethical value owing to the fact that it
ruthlessly discriminates between the haves and the have nots. Such a provision that those who choose
to utilize the normal path will get their visas much later than those who pay for the same justifies this.