Prominent UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader proposed that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
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 permission to remain cancelled, to ensure 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 “broadly in line” with official stance, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a barely concealed 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 experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added 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 discuss the positives of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, 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.
“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 the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and millions 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 floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his family, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, 37. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely adopted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the household has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness continues.
“I find it really odd that in a country where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, for the future.”
