The Home Office is racist by design.
Racism and exclusion are the basis of immigration policies in 2024. They stem from a long history of targeting ‘unwelcome’ groups of migrants based on colonial constructions of race, deservingness or who can be economically ‘useful’ to Britain. Racialised people from Britain’s former colonies being the most affected by raids, detention, deportation and deprivation and deprivation of citizenship.
Our new Hostile Office report explores how immigration legislation limits the ability of racialised people from coming to the UK and controls their freedom to live their lives. The recent ‘illegal’ Migration Bill 2023 and Nationality and Borders Act 2022 are part of a long history of targeting and excluding ‘unwelcome’ and ‘undesirable’ groups of migrants based on colonial ideas of race, deservingness or who can be economically ‘useful’ to Britain.
The innate racism in UK immigration legislation continues to shape numerous policies. While the racist aims of much of this legislation are not explicitly mentioned in UK law, these immigration policies often rely on racist assumptions and White supremacist ideas. This is either through:
- The use of language and concepts that have historically had, and continue to have, racist connotations, or through deliberately vague language, which makes space for arbitrary and racist application
- Other policies, including visa schemes, are overtly more accessible to certain groups (likely to be White, wealthier and/or from the West) and more restrictive to others. Again, while they do not feature the explicit language of racism, they clearly utilise a racist understanding of who is welcome, who is ‘like us’, or who is ‘deserving’ of being here
- Deprivation powers being used to disproportionately dispossess racialised citizens of their British citizenship
Key findings include:
- Since being created to manage areas including colonial and plantation business in 1792, the Hostile Office has existed to manage, regulate or prevent so-called ‘aliens’ or ‘undesirables’ from arriving and living in the UK
- Over the last century, dehumanising, racist, anti-migrant language in the UK has remained consistent, dating from the arrival of Jewish refugees in the late 19th and early 20th century, with migrants being labelled as an “alien invasion”, “swarm” and “locusts”
- The UK’s immigration system and visa schemes are embedded in racism and grounded in the concept of ‘racial commodification’. They are explicitly designed to ‘manage’ racialised people as assets to extract resources or labour from, or dehumanise them through preventative, restrictive and racist immigration policies
- Deprivation of citizenship is racially targeted. Of those who have had their citizenship revoked since 2002, 85% 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
- People of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage are most affected by deprivation of citizenship (41%). All of them (out of the people whose nationalities we know) were born British citizens
Fizza Qureshi, CEO of the Migrants’ Rights Network said: “We are no longer content to simply ask for reforms or tweaks that will make this racist, colonial-era infrastructure ‘acceptable’. For People of Colour and other marginalised groups, this system simply wasn’t designed for us. That is why we are calling for the Hostile Office and immigration system to be dismantled. With a new Government in power, we hope it works with us to dismantle these cruel structures that have made the lives of migrants, and migratised people, a misery, and joins us in taking a bold, transformative stance with migrant justice at the heart of policy.”
Trigger warning: Please note this report analyses historical sources relating to People of Colour and migrants. Therefore, it contains language that may be triggering to some.
Read the report here.