Leading British legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the ramifications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are similar to far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a acceptable political direction for most political parties,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, 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 insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very odd and terrifying, for the future.”
