Leading British legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked 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, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments recently.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later reverted to current rules that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” 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 Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed 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.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The language has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are similar to extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
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 asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about removing 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 shared that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, 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 extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are required, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”
