Leading UK attorneys have raised alarms about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, the party head, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement recently.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later reverted to existing policy that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse 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 the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the benefits of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to the capital, 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 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 Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality residing in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the increase of St George’s flags in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“I find it really odd that in a country where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
