Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader proposed that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a barely concealed keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from previous eras and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about removing 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 partners who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
