Leading UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader proposed that large numbers of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader complained 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 gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks 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 contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss 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 extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous 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 legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her daughter 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, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she added. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions 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 uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality residing in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of Reform in the polls had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a country where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
