Prominent British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader proposed that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
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 revoked, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to current rules 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 Immigration Criticism
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish 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 tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of racism within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert 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,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has surged in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed 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, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling 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 permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing permanent residency – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation 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 household has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
