Leading British attorneys have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful 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 victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has questioned 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, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the wider political debate as racist, alarming and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality residing in the city with his family, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing permanent residency – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” 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 increase of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
