Shock rule could strip us of citizenship right
When I was growing up, my mum and dad always used to say: “They’ll kick us out of this country one day and tell us to go back to our own countries.”
I used to roll my eyes and reply: “Well, they can’t kick me out because I was born here.”
But as Windrush proved, those fears were not baseless. People who had spent their entire lives in the UK were wrongly thrown into immigration detention and sometimes deported – a disgusting and shameful Tory scandal. And it seems they have not learned their lesson.
Baroness Warsi is someone I admire and respect deeply. Whenever I can, I listen to her speeches in the House of Lords. She is one of the few people in politics I feel really represents me as a British Asian woman.
I am grateful for her hard work and tireless efforts in representing the issues that matter to grassroots communities.
So when I heard her talk this week about Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill, which seeks to strip British citizens of their citizenship without notice, I was shocked because I’d never even heard of it.
Baroness Warsi said: “Let me personalise it. My family, as many of yours, were a century ago citizens of the UK and colonies. They had rights. All those in the empire and the Commonwealth did. “When my grandfathers fought for the British Indian Army as British subjects, they did so as citizens. When the Windrush generation answered the call for workers and came to this country, they did so as citizens. When South Asians took up gruelling jobs in the mills and foundries of Yorkshire, they did so as citizens – an equal member of this country; a continuation of a bond that started decades earlier. “It wasn’t a conditional right, or a temporary right, or a right we would try and take away from them and their children or grandchildren in ever more cunningly creative ways. And it certainly wasn’t a privilege.
“It was a right… one established through our colonial history, strife, and blood and sweat – and even with life. By formally taking a British passport, they were formalising a right – not being bestowed a privilege.”
It sends shivers down my spine to think that – despite the fact that I was born, raised and educated here, and have worked, paid taxes and always lived in Britain – my citizenship could be taken away from me without notice.
Baroness Warsi said: “This notion of citizenship being a privilege seems to be a popular, but sadly ignorant, mantra. Of course immigration is not a right, but immigration and immigration controls are very distinct to nationality rights.
“And those who mix them do so because their flawed understanding does not see beyond the colour of someone’s skin.” It beggars belief that someone like
Home Secretary Priti Patel, a daughter of immigrant parents, cannot see how Clause 9 could be detrimental to her family and community – how it could mean they could be deprived of their right to citizenship.
As Baroness Warsi said: “These proposals would mean we would have greater protections when being deprived of our driving licence than our nationality.” I stand firmly with
Baroness
Warsi, and support her call for this government to urgently strike
Clause 9 from the Bill.