Leading UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials 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 residency controversy, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, 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 kids in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, 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 permanent residency – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very odd and frightening, long-term.”
