Prominent UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later distanced herself from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued Forde. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches 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 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 centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, 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 tenets of this, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals 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 described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his family, said the growing support of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating 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, 37. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely adopted 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 hostility persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
