Prominent 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 deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later reverted to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, politicians across various groups have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party 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 migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that statement were not fully understood, and it was targeting a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
Forde, whose parents emigrated 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.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s alarming to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the benefits of immigration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are similar to extremist rallies from previous eras 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 represented hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the residency controversy, in which Britons from the former empire living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she added. “The principles here, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with ILR status, or with partners who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his family, said the growing support of the party in the polls had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy 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”, he has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may think about it if the hostility continues.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are needed, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, for the future.”