Leading 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 lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement 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 revoked, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, the party head, later distanced herself from these comments recently.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the statement has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister 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 experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie 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 daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, alarming and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in the city with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining permanent residency – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the household has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very odd and frightening, long-term.”
