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 significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised 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 contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing permanent residency – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a country where immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very odd and frightening, long-term.”
