Polls suggest most BAME voters favour remain, but there are fears about eastern European migrants, the arrival of neo-Nazis and pressures on poor communities

There is something simmering in the kitchen of Azar Mahmood’s Birmingham takeaway, where political debate is generating as much heat as the deep-fat fryers.

Polls suggest the majority of ethnic minority voters will vote to stay in the EU come referendum day this month, but the remain campaign should not take their votes for granted. There are pockets of support for Brexit in the south Asian community.

Among them is Mahmood, who came to Britain in 1989 and is proud of his success in a business that has been in his family for decades.

Referring to himself as an Anglo-Pakistani, Mahmood is aware of the irony – coming from an immigrant family, he now wants to pull up the drawbridge on others. He says, however, that all his views are valid. “We have worked so hard to earn the right to live here and we contribute to the communities. What we don’t want is more people coming in who won’t bring anything positive and will just take,” he says.

Mahmood admits he does not know many exact facts and figures about the EU, but nonetheless he is unfaltering in his position.

Recent research by the British Election Study suggests that the ethnic minority vote could be crucial to the outcome of the 23 June referendum, and that while white voters are split roughly 50-50, about two-thirds of their black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) counterparts are in favour of remaining in the EU. So while the majority appear to back remain, what exactly is it that makes some BAME voters want to shut the door on immigrants?

They are concerned about the possible arrival of neo-Nazis from parts of Europe where the far-right is strong, the influx of cheap eastern European workers elbowing out their blue-collar Asian counterparts, and resources in traditionally poor communities being stretched further.

Research by the Runnymede Trust, a race relations thinktank, recently revealed that many BAME people are “ambivalent about the benefits of the EU”. A report said: “They appear less likely to take advantage of free movement [very few move about for work and arguably feel less ‘shared identity’ with others in Europe].

“Some view Europe in explicitly ethnic or racial terms, identifying fortress Europe as a way of keeping out non-white immigrants while allowing significant levels of European migration.”

Those originally from Commonwealth countries feel white European migrants do not face the same difficulties with the immigration system as they do. The report said: “Long-settled migrants often feel they have had a difficult time in Britain or at least following their initial arrival; they then may see or think that newer migrants have had better or easier experiences.”

One of the loudest of these leave campaign voices is that of Amjad Bashir, a Ukip defector to the Tory party and now an MEP representing Yorkshire and the Humber.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amjad Bashir. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Bashir’s father came to Britain in 1956 from Jhelum in Punjab, Pakistan. He worked in a textile mill until 1963 and then started his own fabric business.

“Our ministers went over to the Commonwealth countries after two devastating world wars as they needed workers in the cotton mills of Lancashire to the factories in Birmingham. It was managed migration,” he says.

Bashir says he and his followers want a fair immigration system that does not discriminate against “auntie from Pakistan”. He does not want an influx of low-skilled workers from the EU into a jobs market already overflowing with low-skilled Asian workers. “Look, I’m not saying close the doors, but we need to manage this migration,” he says.

Bashir describes a recent meeting with 200 people at Carlisle Business Centre in Bradford, and claims 70% of those who attended were planning to vote to leave the EU. “Their main concerns are about the economy. We contribute so much to the EU, and to be perfectly honest we’d rather keep our money to ourselves, for our country, the NHS and infrastructure rather than sending it to Europe.

“The figures of migration that are being talked about now are completely different to those when my father came over.” He deflects the charge of hypocrisy, saying: “In life there is a trade-off. A nation should be able to decide which skills are required. My fathers’ generation was actively sought. We need to question why some of these immigrants are coming over and what they will bring to our economy.”

His stance is echoed by other prominent Asians who are also calling for a points system, something which the leave campaign leaders Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Priti Patel said on Wednesday should be introduced.

Until two months ago the Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood sat firmly in the leave camp, but then left decrying alleged racist ideologies and scaremongering.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

“At the moment I am nowhere. I have been pushed away by the leave campaign because of the issue around migration and racism,” he says.

But spend more than five minutes with the Labour MP and it is clear he still has more affinity with Brexit. He tells horror stories of eastern European immigrants murdering Pakistani families and Asian women having their gold bangles torn from their arms by Romanian gangs.

Mahmood says he represents those people on the ground who will feel the direct impact of increased European migration.

He is fearful of the influx of poor immigrants into “ghettoised” communities that he says are already struggling with a lack of housing and resources. He says: “We don’t want an open house. We don’t do criminal checks on them. We can’t stop certain types of people coming in.”

He also claims eastern Europeans exploit the UK markets and send “benefit monies” back home to their large families.

Mahmood introduces one of his former leave colleagues, the accountant Saqib Bhatti, 30. In his office in Broad Street, Birmingham, a stack of pro-Brexit leaflets is piled high on his desk, carrying the strapline “Muslims for Britain”.

Bhatti and his entrepreneur friend Mohammed Ali, who runs an online grocery store, cite Commonwealth immigrants having a harder time with border controls and checks and the effect on labour markets and small businesses. Bhatti says: “The EU forces Britain to discriminate against people who want to migrate here from non-EU countries. This isn’t fair and doesn’t make sense.”

But then there is Amina Lone, a second generation immigrant from Pakistan, who says the views of a small contingent are not representative of the British Asian community.

Lone, a Labour councillor and remain campaigner, says: “It is very easy for some people to forget where they have come from and to stoke up a rhetoric of fear and hatred. It is a very narrow view and it is being perpetuated by a small minority with very loud voices. It is a selfish way of thinking and they are using the campaign and this position to forward their own interests.”

Lone says most people in the city’s BAME communities are positive about the EU and understand the economic benefits of remaining. “It is not a panacea and we understand there is a need to reform in some areas but on the whole the EU is a positive thing and we don’t want to leave future generations with a legacy of some kind of island utopia that does not exist.”