As a former 'illegal' immigrant, here's why politicians' rhetoric is so toxic and wrong

The standard line is that immigration is bad and dehumanised migrants are to be treated with suspicion

The images were as striking as they were familiar: a small dingy in a large sea, so crammed with people that some sat astride the edges, their feet dangling mere inches above the water.

The headlines were more familiar still, full of overhyped shock and horror about the issue of small-boat landings on UK shores bringing unwanted immigrants from God knows where to do who knows what.

The weekend saw the highest number of such boats arrive in England so far this year. Of course, the obvious explanation is that it’s the start of summer – they come more frequently at this time of year because the weather is better and the route less perilous.

That explanation failed to wash with much of the media, and with the opposition, which persisted in the criticism that Labour is failing to tackle the issue of immigration, whether by small boats or legal routes.

An inflatable dinghy carrying migrants crosses the English Channel (Picture: Dan Kitwood) | Getty Images

‘Island of strangers’

While Sir Keir Starmer rejects responsibility for the level of net migration to the UK, he is in full-throated support of the position that migration is a problem. When setting out his White Paper last month, Starmer talked tough on his government’s plans to curb the number of people coming to the UK. He spoke of the threat of the UK becoming an “island of strangers” unless serious steps were taken to protect the country's borders.

This is the type of narrative we’ve become inured to – the last government spoke of immigrants “invading” Britain and threatened all sorts of measures, from the punitive, such as the Rwanda deportation plan, to the plain bonkers. There really was a suggestion to use wave machines in the English Channel to push back small boats.

For the Conservative government, the slogan was “stop the boats”. For Labour, it became “smash the gangs”. Of course, to win the approval of voters, politicians need tangible demonstrations of success. It is relatively straightforward to demonstrate an end to small-boat arrivals.

Labour has no measure by which to prove the gangs are smashed and has therefore set itself up for failure. Arrest figures perhaps? Who knows – the government certainly hasn’t said.

Lack of compassion

In fact, in its rush to be as tough on immigration as the Tories, the government has left a series of gaps in its immigration policy and position. Not least any attempt at nuance or compassion. The standard, unchallenged line is that immigration is bad and immigrants are to be treated with suspicion.

Economic migrants, people seeking asylum, overseas students, refugees – all become bundled into a single, faceless, dehumanised group unilaterally written off as a problem. The White Paper’s proposals will make it harder to enter and remain in the UK for would-be immigrants, and it also makes life harder for those who are already here.

One of the tough-talking suggestions, for example, is to mandate that migrants must be settled in the UK for ten years, rather than five, before being eligible for ‘indefinite leave to remain’.

This would mean new arrivals must live and work continuously in the country – tied to an employer and without the safety net of the state – for 11 years before they can apply for a passport, instead of six.

The change would be applied retrospectively so those already in Britain have had their plans thrown into disarray. Unless you have experienced this precarity, it’s impossible to understand the gross impact it has on your life and sense of security and belonging.

Patriarchal attitudes to nationality

The UK is one of a small number of countries that did not allow women to confer nationality on their children. Patrilineal nationality wasn’t abolished retrospectively until, would you believe, 2023.

I came to the UK with my mother as a child, on her passport. One used to be able to go to the Post Office and ask for a temporary passport. It was a sheet of cardboard to which the teller affixed your photo with a Pritt Stick and Bob was your holiday-making uncle.

So I didn’t think to apply for a full UK passport until I was in my 20s, naively believing there wouldn’t be an issue. The sick shock of having my application rejected will never leave me.

My accidental illegal status was eventually resolved but it’s given me an understanding that migration is not easy. It is an enormous privilege to be a dual national and also a burden to always be, no matter where you are, from somewhere else.

The anti-immigration line from the right has always made very little sense. It is, surely, one of the most conservative moves a person can make – to take matters into their own hands, pack up their life and strive, as an individual, to improve their economic circumstances.

Useful scapegoats

The toxic rhetoric on migrants is turning the UK into a hostile, inward-looking country where politicians are making crucial policy positions, not because they are right, but because they play to a sense of fear of outsiders that has been nurtured by successive governments to create bogeymen on which to blame their own failings.

If anything prevents integration and causes alienation in communities, it is that. When a Labour Prime Minister takes the line that Britain has run a “failed experiment in open borders”, we should be deeply concerned.

Scotland needs migrants. It needs to reverse its declining birth rate; it needs to plug staffing gaps in industries that do not have enough UK-born workers.

The SNP government has long taken a more welcoming and outward-looking approach to immigration but the hard right is gaining a foothold in the Scottish electoral imagination and the easy route would be to ape the Labour line on tough immigration curbs.

That can’t be allowed to happen. If Scotland is to be exceptional in any area, welcoming outsiders and pushing back on punitive immigration policies must be it.

Catriona Stewart is a reporter, broadcaster and political journalist