Keir Starmer’s Immigration Bill Only Continues Right’s Racist Agenda in UK

Over the past few years of increasingly hostile migration policies, many in the migrant, including refugee, charity sector have looked to the dawn of a new government with eager anticipation. Surely, a Labour government would undo so many of these cruel anti-migration laws and mark a more ‘progressive’ chapter in migrant rights?

Unfortunately, at the Migrants’ Rights Network, we have not shared this optimism.

While the new government wasted little time in scrapping the infamous Rwanda Plan (and rightly so) it has diverted funds from that scheme into yet another anti-migrant policy in the form of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill. The announcement of this bill proves our caution was completely justified. It’s simply a continuation of the U.K.’s track record of enacting immigration policies that disproportionately impact people of color.

We only have to look at the record of the last Labour government to see that they are no different to the Conservatives in embedding anti-migrant policies and rhetoric. Let’s not forget it was a Labour home secretary who first coined the term ‘hostile environment’ and it was New Labour that brought in the restrictive Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 and Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which laid the foundation for the hostile environment policies of the past 14 years.

In the past year itself, now-prime minister, Keir Starmer, has made plenty of not-so-subtle signs indicating what approach his government would take towards people seeking safety, including a promise to treat so-called ‘smugglers’ like “terrorists.”

Fast forward one year and these ideas have materialised in the form of the new Border Security Bill. The bill was announced as part of the King’s Speech and is part of a turn towards approaching migration through counter-terror, making space for even greater surveillance of and denial of rights for migrants, including refugees.

This dangerous bill would introduce powers previously been confined to alleged terror offenders, including travel bans and restrictions in the UK and abroad, restrictions on access to the internet and banking, and the ability to apply these measures before someone is even convicted of smuggling offences.

U.K.’s Immigration Policy Has Always Been Racist

Successive U.K. governments have essentially tried to ‘outdo’ each other when it comes to making the lives of migrants, including refugees, and racialised communities unbearable. In fact, these rafts of policies stem from a long history of targeting ‘unwelcome’ groups based on colonial constructions of the ‘threat’ and who are considered to be of ‘good character.’

In the Migrants’ Rights Network’s new Hostile Office report, we demonstrate that from the 1905 Aliens Act to the inhumane Migration Act 2023 (Illegal Migration Act), as well as the suffering of the Windrush victims and the government’s ability to deprive people of their citizenship, it should be evident to all of us that immigration laws are underpinned by a desire to limit the presence and freedom of racialised people in the U.K.

Proposed powers in the new Border Security Bill would enable border force officers to search people and examine and seize their belongings, including copying data from and retaining people’s mobile phones, without a requirement for reasonable suspicion. It mirrors Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, where someone can be arrested and convicted for refusing to hand over sensitive and personal information, including passcodes to devices, in addition to failing to answer all questions or refusing to provide biometric data — all without the need for reasonable suspicion.

However, implementing counter-terrorism policies into immigration is hardly surprising or new. It marks just another chapter of an increasingly cruel, racist and Islamophobic trajectory in the immigration system.

Take citizenship laws, for example. Deprivation of citizenship and counter-terror laws are linked: most cases of deprivation on ‘public good’ grounds have been justified using counter-terror legislation. We have been campaigning against the expansion of deprivation of citizenship powers and highlighting the racist, Islamophobic nature of them.

Since the 2003 ‘Hamza amendment’ to the British Nationality Act 1981 (an amendment that was passed specifically to deport one man, Abu Hamza, a naturalised British citizen), of those who have had their citizenship revoked since 2002, the majority of people affected have been British Muslims.

Our findings show that between 2002 and 2022, 85% of those stripped of their citizenship had, or were deemed to have, nationalities of countries in Africa, South Asia or West Asia (the Middle East) and 83% were from former British colonies. Of this, 41% were South Asian, all being Pakistani or Bangladeshi.

It is, therefore, not a huge leap to understand that the presence of counter-terror measures serves to limit the freedom, security and sense of belonging for racialised people in the U.K., particularly those from a Muslim background.

Meanwhile, in December 2023, the Home Office published an Independent Review of Prevent’s report and the government’s response by William Shawcross (Independent Reviewer of Prevent) in which he recommended the Government explore extending Prevent into the immigration and asylum system. Make no mistake, linking the racist criminal (in)justice and counter-terror systems will further the harm and punishment to people seeking safety and a new life. It will do nothing to target the true roots of why people migrate and are forced to make dangerous border crossings.

The answer to a lack of safe routes is not further criminalisation through the introduction of counter-terror powers, which are often opaque and almost impossible to challenge. This lack of safe routes is why brokers exist, to capitalise on people’s desperation.

The Border Security Bill, and the counter-terrorism approach as part of a package deal, will just continue a long tradition of punishing people of color at the U.K. border.