Beware of the law of unintended consequences.

That’s the lesson behind the Immigration legislation that is now putting Bermudians who are married to non-Bermudians at a disadvantage in the Bermuda economy.

This, of course, is not the first time this has happened. Under the United Bermuda Party, Bermudians with non-Bermudian spouses were often prevented from returning home due to work permit restrictions. Common sense prevailed then, and the legislation was changed in the early 1990s, when spouses of Bermudians were given, in effect, equal rights with Bermudians in the workplace.

Now a similar act of discrimination towards Bermudians married to non-Bermudians has arisen, largely out of Government’s justified enthusiasm to stop the practice known as fronting in which Bermudians pretended to be the owners of homes actually owned by non-Bermudians.

But in doing so, the Ministry of Labour and Immigration has spread its net wide and has forced Bermudians and their non-Bermudian spouses to get a licence when they wish to buy a property. There’s nothing wrong with that, except that the dead hand of bureaucracy means getting the licence can take months, thus giving a Bermudian buyer an advantage in the market.

Government says it is working to cut the length of time it takes to issue this licence down to three weeks, but skeptics will be rightly dubious that the Immigration Department, already burdened with passport applications, key employee applications and the usual wave of other immigration paperwork, can achieve this.

The more serious act of discrimination concerns the limitation on Bermudians with non-Bermudian spouses from owning more than one property. This legislation is based on the limitation on non-Bermudians owning more than one home, which is generally accepted.

But the effect of this policy is to discriminate against Bermudians, purely because they happen to have fallen in love with someone who was not born here.

Government has been quick to note that the restriction does not apply once the couple has been married for ten years and the non-Bermudian spouse has received Bermudian status.

But ten years is a long time to wait, and it is not at all clear whether the restriction on home ownership applies to, for example, a house with a built-in apartment, which is still one of the most common ways for homeowners to pay their mortgages in Bermuda’s overheated housing market.

The key point to remember here is that this legislation discriminates against Bermudians, who, because they chose to marry a non-Bermudian, are now at a disadvantage compared to other Bermudians who are either single or have happened to marry another Bermudian.

That makes no sense, and may well drive Bermudians out of their own country as a result.