I wish I was surprised at Sajid Javid’s shocking immigration comments

You might have thought that the immigration debate couldn’t get any more poisonous, but you’d have been wrong – because former home secretary Sajid Javid has taken it upon himself to openly state that he wouldn’t allow people like his own parents into the UK.

He told the Times that he wouldn’t have permitted entry to his unskilled father or a mother who didn’t speak English, adding ‘The biggest block to good community cohesion is English.

‘We should have set a requirement that if you want to settle in the UK, you should be able to speak fluent English. We should have done that ages ago.’

Let that sink in for a moment.

The multi-millionaire banker and self-made son of immigrants, whose father famously came to the UK from Pakistan with nothing but a pound note in his pocket, told the entire country that times have now changed so much that families like his should be denied entry.

If that doesn’t tell you how heartless and hypocritical this ‘debate’ has become, then nothing will.The worst thing is that I can’t even say I’m that surprised. The truth is that the immigration debate in Britain is not about looking after who is here or ensuring there are enough resources for all.

It’s a race to the bottom in which even former politicians compete to prove who can sound the toughest, the coldest, and the least moved by human consequence.

Javid’s comments were made as he promotes his new memoir, The Colour of Home, in which he details the poverty, violence and racism his family experienced as he grew up in Thatcher’s Britain.

To have survived such sustained racist abuse only to come out the other side and appear to perpetuate a new wave of bigotry on today’s immigrants and their descendants is, well, dystopian at best.

His comment might simply be a publicity stunt to drum up some buzz about the memoir of an ex-politician who has all but dwindled into insignificance.

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But it could also be a symptom of something more sinister: a living, breathing, pulling-up-the-ladder example of what happens when we distil people’s lives and safety into cold, hard numbers and catchy soundbites.

Javid’s comments weren’t just clumsy or poorly phrased. In fact, you could argue they weren’t even that. You could argue that he knew exactly what he was saying, and he articulated it very intentionally.

Because this is only the latest contribution to a political culture that has spent decades normalising cruelty, exceptionalism and historical amnesia when it comes to immigration from anywhere except the west.

For years, we had been fed the fairytale that Britain is a utopia of equality, where anyone willing to work hard and contribute can build a future.

And in an effort to support that fairytale, British politicians have insisted the immigration debate is about fairness, a rules-based system and retaining control, nothing more sinister or calculating than that. 

Javid’s comments confirm a harsh truth that many of us have suspected for a long time, whether that’s in the structural racism we face at work, the casual xenophobia plastered over every front page or the hateful and divisive way politicians speak about people like us.

In the name of controlling immigration, callousness has become normalised.

You only have to look at the phrasing of Theresa May’s 2012 anti-immigration policy (the Hostile Environment) to see that this is by design.

Today, almost 15 years on, we have a climate where anti-Muslim hate is at an all-time high, where hotels housing asylum seekers are violently attacked, and anyone who is visibly ‘other’, like me, feels unsafe in the country we were born in.

I could go into the historical hypocrisy of former colonies like ours invading and pillaging across the globe, then inviting those so-called subjects to rebuild Britain when it needed it. I could discuss at length how demoralising it is that, only a few decades later, politicians compete to see who can dehumanise migrants the most.

But this is about more than Britain’s bloodstained past, and its refusal to acknowledge the results of its own grimy labours.

This is about facing what sort of country Britain has become and how this descent into nationalism that we have witnessed – with the rise of Reform and the proliferation of far-right ideologies into mainstream politics – is stripping the nation of its humanity.

There is something particularly grim about watching politicians from migrant backgrounds pull the ladder up behind them, presenting their own success as proof that the system is fair while advocating policies that would have prevented that very success.

I cannot comprehend the mental gymnastics it would require to advocate for even the hypothetical rejection of your very own flesh and blood.

Javid’s comments, which are so preposterous that they would be laughable if they weren’t so scary, are a symptom of the brutality and harshness that has come to define this national immigration debate.

We only have to look to America to witness what happens when the issue of immigration is stripped of its humanity – where arbitrary borders and cold figures supersede the sanctity of human life.

Of course, we can soothe ourselves with stories like, ‘That could never happen here.’ Convince ourselves that we’ll always have the US to compare ourselves favourably to, as it plumbs depths we’d never countenance or condone. 

But the erosion of compassion is a slippery slope, and when we have politicians openly arguing that people shouldn’t be allowed to take the same routes that brought their family to the UK, it’s increasingly difficult to assuage our concerns that we’re going in exactly the same inhuman, anti-immigration direction. 

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jessica.aureli@metro.co.uk. 

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