Prominent UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the main route 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 phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from previous eras and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“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-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she added. “The principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Personal Impact
People with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as racist, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a person with dual nationality living in the city with his family, said the recent surge of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely adopted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“I find it really odd that in a country where immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
