Prominent British legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a future party leader proposed that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a barely concealed keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister 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.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are similar to extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she added. “The principles here, the reach 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. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse 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 the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating 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 not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
