Prominent British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend 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. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of racism within Labour.
Forde, whose family migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the benefits of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Recently, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers 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 political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen 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 past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation of national symbols in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”