Just beads in a glass jar: This is how the Tories dehumanize migrants and those in need | Frances Ryan

THere’s a video doing the rounds On social media Where Conservative MP Katie Lam pours beads into glass bowls. Each bead represents 1,000 immigrants, as well as the containers in which they live, namely Britain. As Lam points out the number of people on indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and “all the welfare and services” they have access to, the jar is ominously overflowing. “State support should be for citizens only,” she says directly to the camera. “And if they are already here, they should not be able to continue receiving benefits. Instead, they will have to leave.”

This is not just a social media clip from a rogue shadow minister. It is – most likely – actual Conservative Party policy. In recent days, the party confirmed it would retrospectively strip residence rights (also known as ILR) from people who claim benefits or whose dependents claim them, even if they have lived here for decades. On Wednesday, after significant backlash, officials said a new policy would be issued.In the coming weeks“But he refused to rule out removing the ILR.

I thought about this when I read research conducted by the charity on Thursday Turn2us This shows how decades of negative attitudes and distrust toward Social Security have been “integrated” into the design of the system. The researchers found that 64% of current claimants believe the Department for Work and Pensions is “trying to get them”. It is a damning indictment of previous governments’ assaults on the safety net and vital evidence for Labor as it looks to another attempt at so-called welfare reform. But the report also functions as something else: a warning of how ripe this country is to buy into the myth that “foreigners” are draining the benefits system.

Conservatives are not alone in anchoring their immigration policy in the language of welfare dependence. When the Reform movement launched its plan to abolish freelance work last month, its leader Nigel Farage did so with the (unsubstantiated) claim that more than 50% of people set to become eligible for the scheme in the next few years “are not working, never have worked, and probably never will work”.

It is no coincidence that the media and right-wing politicians are merging the two problems together, or that this is happening at the same time as the far right is mobilizing its forces. Attacks on immigration and benefits rely on a similarly ugly bias: some members of society “contribute” and others “bear the cost” and, in extreme cases, drain healthy, white, privileged populations.

It is often said nowadays that ideas that were once fringe in politics have become mainstream, and this is certainly the case. But the truth is that many of these ideas – that certain groups are burdens, that productivity equates to a moral value, and that social inequality constitutes personal failure – have been around for some time.

The claim that immigrants are a burden on British taxpayers thrives in a society that has long portrayed the benefits system as overly generous and easy to exploit. From single mothers under New Labor to people with disabilities during the Coalition years, over the past 30 years successfully receiving state support has been stigmatised. Benefit reforms over the past decade – from subsistence-level benefit rates and increased use of penalties, to degrading disability assessments – have in effect served as “punishments” for people who dare to be poor or sick. Linking the benefit bill to immigration status is in many ways a logical next step, as claiming Social Security is now sufficient grounds for deportation.

In the coming days, stay tuned for a discussion about what types of state support can amount to deportation — a sentence that, in itself, would be a fine one to write. We’ve known for a long time that not all Social Security is created equal. There are “good benefits” (such as pensions and child benefits) and there are “bad benefits” (unemployment and disability), just as there are “bad benefits.”Good immigrants“(Doctors, teachers) and ‘bad’ people (job seekers or NHS patients). It would be easy enough for the right to promote the idea that a young person on long-term sickness benefit, for example, is a drain on public money; it is very difficult to do so with a GP on maternity leave. One of the few details Tory officials have bothered to clarify about the policy is that older people will not lose their ILR for claiming the state pension, giving a clear hint that Enough about the arguments coming our way.

For an insight into how misinformation and stigma can be weaponized together, just look at the shadow work and pensions secretary, Helen Whately, who Incorrectly claimed on X What people get in the Mobility SchemeFree cars for acne treatment“There is a sense that the gloves have been taken off, as politicians, legacy media and big tech platforms increasingly deploy far-fetched claims for profit and power. That the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty has just warned that welfare cuts in recent years have fueled the rise of the far right and populism globally shows how circular all of this is. The politicians who want to cut your benefits are the same ones who will prosper from them.

However, if we hold on to the thread of the social safety net, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the whole thing unravel. Does legal illness pay for poor counting? What about one-time support after floods? What the hard right may find is that an uncomfortable truth will emerge: that all of us at any given time could become sick or unemployed; Most of us will face aging. Far from suggesting the dehumanization of migrants, few things are a clearer sign that they are human than the need for some help. In the end, we’re all just beads together in a bowl.