Leading UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families 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 legal status in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has sparked concern for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for 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 mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple 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 acceptable political direction for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it extend widely 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?”
Personal Impact
People with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the polls had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the increase of St George’s flags in his area, a trend 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 persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
