Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a future party leader suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to guarantee 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 reverted to current rules that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the proposal has raised alarms for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and part of a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have absorbed anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a particular audience,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of racism within Labour.
The barrister, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to change and has to be truthful.”
Public Sentiment and Extremist Movements
Backing for the party has increased in the polls, 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 fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians target migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has questioned whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“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.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she added. “The principles here, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and expelling people who are lawfully resident, 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 insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, alarming and hostile.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the polls had motivated him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the procedure of obtaining ILR – at a significant expense – after moving 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, 37. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three years.”
While in daily life, he has “no problems”, he has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George’s flags in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“I find it really odd that in a nation where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the demonisation very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
