Leading UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, 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 Residency Rights
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 cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In recent months, politicians across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the party’s leader, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration 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 ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the present political debate was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The rhetoric has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many British people of colour feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from previous eras and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as elected officials target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK legally were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has asked whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting young people in their twenties and thirties who have got two generations ahead of them, UK-born, experiencing insecurity,” 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 principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, 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 described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a person with dual nationality living in Manchester with his family, said the recent surge of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said the man, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been concerned by the increase of St George’s flags in his neighbourhood, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. In the future, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I consider the demonisation very odd and frightening, for the future.”
