It
seems unlikely that Katie Lam, who is, apparently, a ‘rising star’ in the
Conservative Party, gave even a millisecond’s thought to Wales, Scotland or
Northern Ireland when she called
for deportation on a scale which would restore a sufficient degree of ‘cultural
coherence’ to the UK. It’s hard to interpret ‘cultural coherence’ as meaning
anything other than ‘white, English-speaking’ though. It’s racist through and
through, but then perhaps what gives her that rising star status is an ability to find new
words to express racism without explicitly referring to race. It’s pretty clear
that any minority which doesn’t fit her definition must be kept as small as
possible, and can never be truly ‘British’, even if she really means English.
One
aspect of what she had to say is particularly concerning, in her call for
people who followed all the rules, and have been living in the UK entirely
legally, to be deported on the grounds that the rules were wrong at the time.
The immediate impact would be felt by large numbers of families which would be
torn apart if one member were to be deported – unless, of course, she’s also
planning to deport UK citizens who were born and raised here along with one or
both of their parents. The secondary impact would be the loss of productive
workers across a number of sectors of the UK economy, including in particular
(although not limited to) health and care.
There
is also a third implication of her proposed approach. If it were ever to be
implemented, it would mean that none of us could any longer be certain that
what we did legally 10, 20 or even 30 years ago is not retrospectively considered
to be a criminal act. Changing immigration rules retrospectively might well
appeal to those of a racist bent, but it’s a dangerous precedent to set. That
it is official Tory policy to backdate rule changes by decades underlines just how far
that party has moved from its traditional respect for the rule of law.
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