Prominent UK attorneys have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a potential leadership candidate proposed that large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with lawful residence 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 Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was targeting a specific group,” 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 “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse 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 Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations 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 “going backwards” 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 Britons from the former empire living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved 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 overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it spread so far 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
People with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining ILR – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very odd and frightening, for the future.”
