Leading British legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, politicians across various groups have absorbed anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in last autumn, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments 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 multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from previous eras and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her child has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see kids in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are lawfully resident, and millions 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 expressed that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had motivated 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 relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he fears 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 the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
