Prominent British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later reverted to existing policy that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not comprehended, 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 West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, 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 heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see kids in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she added. “The principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and removing people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
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 insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester 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 process of securing permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his area, a practice 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 consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“I find it really odd that in a country where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the demonisation very odd and frightening, long-term.”
