Today's letter… Buckle up, it’s a long one.
To: Vicky Foxcroft, #Labour MP for Lewisham North
Subject: The target on my back
I moved to the UK in 2010, got my ILR in 2015, and became a citizen in 2018. As a Commonwealth citizen, UK citizenship didn't actually gain me any advantages I didn't already have – but I saw which way the winds were blowing. The UK government has long hated immigrants like me.
I knew there was a non-zero chance that the government would seek to strip me of what rights I had.
But I always assumed it would be a Tory government that would be the ones seeking to strip rights from people like me.
Fifteen years ago, I was putting my application together for a visa to come to the UK. It was something I'd been working towards for four years.
I had just reached the point where I met the requirements but not yet submitted my application when Gordon Brown's government changed the rules, raising the minimum earnings threshold for a Tier 1 highly skilled worker visa by 50%. As my annual earnings were near the new level but not quite at it, I worked a ton of overtime over the next month to meet the new requirements.
I received my visa in May 2010. That same month, the Tories formed a new government. One of their first actions was to double the minimum earnings threshold for the Tier 1 (highly skilled worker) visa. The changes took effect less than two weeks after I received my work visa. I would never have qualified under the new rules.
And now, fifteen years later, you're making people wait ten years before applying for ILR. That's a cash grab – but it's worse than that too. It's about forcing people to continue to reapply for work visas if they want to remain in the country. And because the cost of applying for work visas is so prohibitively high, it will force people to leave. Those are people who live here, work here, love people here.
People who support our economy and participate in our society. You're forcing them to leave because Mr Starmer says we’re turning us into 'an island of strangers.'
Every time I think I couldn't be more disgusted, this government sets out to prove me wrong.
I'm coming up on 15 years in the UK. And in that time, I've seen how much this country hates immigrants.
Last week I asked you to name me one difference between today's Labour and the Tories. I haven't heard back from you yet, but I've found the answer to my question: the difference is that Labour are competent where the Tories are chancers.
That is not a compliment.
Labour hates the same people the Tories do. While Tories made a lot of noise about hating us, this Labour government is ruthlessly and efficiently working to make our lives here untenable.
Starmer's speech yesterday is already drawing widespread comparison to Enoch Powell's infamous 'Rivers of Blood' speech. And for good reason. Even the Tories were never this hostile to us.
I am an immigrant. My Canadian passport shows my gender as X (though, obviously my British one does not). I'm disabled. That makes me part of three separate demographics explicitly and efficiently targeted by this government.
Who's next? We all know the words of Martin Niemöller's poem. There aren't very many lines.
