Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a future party leader suggested 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, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the main route for immigration 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 phrase were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks 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 served the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the benefits of immigration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes 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, 37. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three 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 co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very odd and terrifying, for the future.”