Leading British attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks 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 Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve 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 minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are similar to extremist rallies from previous eras and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Lately, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“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.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several 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 worries his family would be split up.
“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 two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and frightening, for the future.”
