Prominent UK attorneys have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, 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 Conservative leader, the party head, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the proposal has raised alarms 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, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose parents emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity 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.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain 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 Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
