Indefinite Leave to Remain
Debate between Iqbal Mohamed and Shockat Adam(1 week ago)
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Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I have much to say in this debate, hence it is very difficult for me to know where to begin. However, I will begin by thanking the petitioners.
For this MP—indeed, this is also the case for many of the MPs in this room, and for Cabinet Ministers and shadow Ministers, and even for a Prime Minister—I am what I am because of the manner in which this country treated me when I came here. I had two parents who could not speak a word of English, yet the support that we received means that now we have a dynasty of academics, entrepreneurs, professionals and even a parliamentarian—although I know, for some people, that might be enough to create a policy to make sure that it never happens again. [Laughter.]
We have a sense of belonging to this land, even though we are far away from our ancestral land. That does not happen by chance. It happens by design, and it can only happen in a country that promotes integration based on the values of decency, respect and contribution, rather than contempt, impatience and transactional values. It works when a society respects values that should be woven into its fabric—when we value our care workers, our frontline health workers, our teachers and our transport workers, not because of how much money they earn but because they are the foundation of our society.
Iqbal Mohamed
A lot of people who have come here have been branded “the Boris wave”, but one of my Nigerian constituents told me they came here under “the covid wave”, to care for people in this country.
Shockat Adam
I agree with the hon. Gentleman.
Having a policy like the current one also flies in the face of the Prime Minister’s pre-election pledge. It is a betrayal of his sixth pledge, which we were told was:
“an immigration system rooted in compassion and dignity.”
I, and I am sure many others, feel the betrayal most sharply when it comes from an Asian Home Secretary—someone whose own journey reflects the promise of migration, but who now advances policies that punish people who are just like her own family and mine once were.
Apart from the policy being morally bankrupt, it also flies in the face of fiscal responsibility. We are told that this issue is all about cost, and that migration is a burden. Yet those claims collapse under scrutiny. The widely cited £234 billion “ILR emergency figure” has been discredited even by its own authors. Correct the errors and migration delivers a net fiscal gain of £100 billion.