Immigration Could Sway Coming Vote in Britain

LUTON, England — When Mohammed Qurban stood outside the Jamia mosque in the heavily Muslim Bury Park district on Tuesday and spoke anxiously about Britain’s record-high levels of immigration, he was reflecting a powerful undercurrent that could help tip victory in dozens of constituencies in Thursday’s general election to the main opposition groups vying with the governing Labour Party for power, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

“I think this country is coming overpopulated, too many people coming in from everywhere, especially Europe,” Mr. Qurban said, as fellow worshipers nodded in assent. In particular, he said, thousands of Poles in Luton were taking jobs from the children and grandchildren of a previous generation of immigrants like himself, those who arrived from Pakistan in one of Britain’s early waves of migration in the 1960s.

The conversation with Mr. Qurban, and at least a dozen others like it with Muslims in Luton, captured a shift of potentially far-reaching significance. The most strident opponents of large-scale immigration have traditionally been white, native-born Britons, and their favorite target immigrant blacks and Asians, particularly Muslims.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/world/europe/05britain.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

so I can't tell what effect it's having.

Brits are probably tossing coins!

expected.

The Lib Dems are the only "pro-legalization" party and the BNP is by far the most anti-immigration. Of course, for the Lib Dems there are many other issues and factors in how well or poorly they do, while for the BNP being against immigration (and the EU) is basically it.

Especially all the immigrant bashing in the British tabloids.