Leading UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. 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 current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across political parties have absorbed anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, 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 “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the implications 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 Labour.
Forde, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the benefits of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
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.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two 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 most political parties,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his family, said the recent surge of Reform in the polls had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, 37. “Who knows how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, for the future.”
