Leading UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the statement 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 proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, politicians across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway 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 phrase were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has surged in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys 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 huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a country where immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
