Leading British attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate 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 Labour feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“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 extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to extremist rallies from previous eras and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the former empire living in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her child has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“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 reach of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
Individuals with permanent residency, 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 wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be implemented, 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 problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely adopted by the far-right 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, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
