Prominent UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader suggested that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing permanent residency – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are required, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
