Leading British attorneys have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a future party leader suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, politicians across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” 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,” added the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the benefits of migration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from previous eras and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Lately, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see kids in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, 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 partners who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of securing permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very odd and frightening, long-term.”
