\n<\/p>\n
Leading British lawyers have warned of a political \u201crace to the bottom\u201d, after a Conservative MP tipped as future party leader said large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.<\/p>\n
Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, said people with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay revoked, to ensure the UK is mostly \u201cculturally coherent\u201d. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, rowed back on Lam\u2019s statement last Thursday, weeks later.<\/p>\n
While Badenoch has gone from saying the statement was \u201cbroadly in line\u201d with party policy to reverting to existing policy that revokes indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has committed a crime, the statement has sparked concern for many as a signal of \u201cdangerous times\u201d and belonging to a larger political discourse. In recent months leaders across political parties have absorbed anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that once belonged on the fringes.<\/p>\n
Most recently, a Reform UK leader complained of \u201cevery advert\u201d seemingly featuring \u201cblack and Asian people\u201d, and in September, the party\u2019s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to abolish the main route for immigration to gain British citizenship. Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an \u201cisland of strangers\u201d without tougher immigration policies.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t accept that the ramifications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was appealing to a particular audience,\u201d said Martin Forde KC, a leading barrister who has investigated claims of racism within Labour.<\/p>\n
Forde, whose parents migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam\u2019s comments were a \u201cthinly disguised keep Britain white campaign\u201d. The leading barrister said the current political discourse was an \u201cabsolute indictment\u201d that someone such as himself, from generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a race to the bottom,\u201d added Forde. \u201cIt\u2019s desperate to see Labour feeling the only answer to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the positives of migration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rhetoric has to change and has to be accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and far-right marches have drawn thousands to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the situation is reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and fearful the UK is \u201cgoing backwards\u201d as politicians target migrants.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in very dangerous times,\u201d said the lawyer Jacqueline McKenzie, who has represented hundreds of victims at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth living in the UK legally were classed wrongly as illegal migrants.<\/p>\n
McKenzie said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we\u2019re getting kids in their 20s and 30s who have got two generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,\u201d said McKenzie, who is a partner and head of immigration and asylum law at Leigh Day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,\u201d she added. \u201cThe tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. That\u2019s something very different, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n
People with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have told the Guardian the recent policies floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling insecure in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as racist, frightening and hostile.<\/p>\n
Ramzi Darwazeh, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the recent surge of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the process of obtaining ILR \u2013 at a huge financial cost \u2013 after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be implemented, he fears his family would be separated.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easy for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,\u201d said Darwazeh, 37. \u201cWho knows how this plays out in two, three years.\u201d<\/p>\n
While day to day, he has \u201cno issues\u201d, Darwazeh has been alarmed by the proliferation of St George\u2019s flags in his area, a practice that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the hostility continues.<\/p>\n
\u201cI find it really odd that in a country where migrants are needed, no one\u2019s actually selling a positive story about migration at all,\u201d he added. \u201cI just find the demonisation very odd and frightening, long-term.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Leading British lawyers have warned of a political \u201crace to the bottom\u201d, after a Conservative MP tipped as future party leader said large numbers of legally settled families must be deported. Katie Lam, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, said people with legal status in the UK should have their right to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[2917,1035,4280,2081,3807,2541,2475,1162,2268,1952],"class_list":{"0":"post-32238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-asylum","9":"tag-bottom","10":"tag-deportation","11":"tag-immigration","12":"tag-issues","13":"tag-lawyers","14":"tag-race","15":"tag-threat","16":"tag-tory","17":"tag-warn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}