Prominent UK attorneys have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Tory leader, the party head, later retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have absorbed anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “every advert” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without tougher immigration policies.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the positives of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party 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 fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple 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 legitimate policy orientation 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 vast numbers of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys 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 suggested changes be implemented, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. In the future, though the household has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very odd and frightening, for the future.”
