Prominent UK legal professionals have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated 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 withdraw permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Escalating Pattern of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, 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.
“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 examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister 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 experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually discuss the benefits of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be accurate.”
National Mood and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are reminiscent of extremist rallies from previous eras and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Lately, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see kids in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-migrant sentiment is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing 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 spouses who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be enacted, 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. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, Darwazeh has been concerned by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely adopted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a country where immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, for the future.”
