Leading British attorneys have raised alarms about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
The MP, 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 retreated from these comments last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, politicians across various groups have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a Reform UK leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to gain 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 statement were not fully understood, 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 West Indies, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “absolute indictment” 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 Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the benefits of immigration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the present debate. Lately, her child has asked 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, experiencing insecurity,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she added. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about removing and removing people who are legally in the country, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders 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 the city with his wife and children, said the growing support of the party in the surveys had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of securing permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, he has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely adopted by the extremist groups and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are required, nobody is promoting a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very odd and frightening, for the future.”
