Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s new home affairs spokesperson, has said that he will secure Britain’s borders to make us feel safe (22 February). My response, as a classmate of immigrants, a friend of immigrants and the child of immigrants, is that it is not immigrants who make me feel unsafe, it is the idea that my friends who have lived here nearly their whole lives could face deportation. It is the idea that my friends will face harassment and abuse because they don’t look or sound “British”.
I am scared, and my friends are scared, of politicians who have the power to break up our communities and don’t seem to view us as people. Immigrants aren’t villains – they are our doctors and nurses, our restaurant owners and shopkeepers, our teachers and friends and families.
I remember Brexit and my parents sitting down at the kitchen table, coming up with plans should my mum’s permanent residency status be removed.
I grew up reading books such as The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Rauf, and I don’t understand how so many people view immigrants as enemies and not just as people.
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