Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader suggested that significant quantities of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
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 revoked, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw 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 part of a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose family migrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised 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 served the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from previous eras and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see young people in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour 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 legally in the country, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a country where immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
