Leading UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Tory lawmaker seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Residency Rights
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “broadly in line” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only revoke indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated proposals that were once considered fringe. Lately, a Reform UK leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “ethnic minorities”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has examined claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see the opposition feeling the only answer to the rival party is to try and outdo their policies, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the surveys, and extremist demonstrations have drawn thousands to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as elected officials focus on migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the heart of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the Commonwealth living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Currently we see kids in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the reach of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and expelling people who are lawfully resident, and vast numbers of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
People with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies suggested by political figures have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, frightening and hostile.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of obtaining permanent residency – at a significant expense – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said the man, 37. “It’s uncertain how this unfolds 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 co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness continues.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are required, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
