Leading UK attorneys have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that significant quantities 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 guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, the party head, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement recently.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later returned to current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route 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.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was targeting a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within the opposition party.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she added. “The principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and removing people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of the party in the polls had pushed 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 marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a country where immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the demonisation very odd and frightening, long-term.”
