Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Tory lawmaker considered a future party leader proposed that large numbers of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks 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 permission to remain cancelled, to ensure the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, the party head, later distanced herself from these comments recently.
While the leader initially said the remarks were “generally consistent” with party policy, she later returned to current rules that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has committed a crime. Nevertheless, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a signal of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In recent months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Lately, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in last autumn, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to abolish the primary pathway for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“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 the opposition party.
Forde, whose family emigrated from the West Indies, said the remarks were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an “utter condemnation” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still feel insecure.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to Reform 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 Extremist Movements
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from previous eras and fearful the UK is “going backwards” as politicians target migrants.
“We’re in very dangerous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK lawfully were mistakenly categorized as illegal migrants.
McKenzie said her father, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be deeply disturbed over the current discourse. Lately, her daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, 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 most political parties,” she added. “The principles here, the reach of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and removing people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the wider political debate as racist, frightening and unwelcoming.
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in the city with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing permanent residency – at a huge financial cost – after relocating to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the suggested changes be implemented, he worries his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no problems”, he has been alarmed by the proliferation of national symbols in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a positive story about immigration at all,” he added. “I just find the vilification very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
