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 legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate 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 stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, 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 “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her child has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see kids in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and removing people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the recent surge of Reform in the surveys 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 suggested changes be implemented, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out 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 practice that has been widely adopted 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 immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
