I'm a British asian - at least half anyway. And I know lots of asians in the party.

I agree with you that there is a caricature of the "ingratiating asian" who leaves one party to join another when rebuffed - but it's bollocks.

The fact is it happens, but when white people do it, they are not defined by their colour and so their actions are attributed to other factors. Keith Axon, Alan Hughes and John Fairly-Churchill were all Labour Councillors in Redbridge at some time since the 80s, who defected to the Tories. No-one once asked what it was about their race that led them to it.

I could also introduce you to people who were socialists before they immigrated to Britain and who have been dedicated to the Labour Party since their arrival - some of whom have been Labour members longer than I have been alive. Harmegh Singh Rattan, who won accolades at the London Regional Labour Conference last year, is one of them.

However, you do ask a different question as well, on the transfer of political alliegances from abroad. A number of organisations have over the years seen Britain as a safe haven when their political activities would have put them in prison in places like Bangladesh, Egypt and Saudi Arabia - because we are a society that values free speech. There's also a degree of "rawnesss" that can emerge when there are local troubles in other parts of the world directly affecting the families of first generation immigrants - this is only to be expected.

In Ilford I have seen Jamaati jihadists organise against Labour for the LibDems. I have seen leaflets produced by Hindu extremists opposing Muslim candidates. I have had a Jewish Tory Councillor tell me how he won't vote for any Mosque planning applications because there are too many of "them" in the area - and I have had a protestant Labour activist tell me how unhappy they would be if a Catholic were allowed to succeed to the throne.

People are just a bit wierd and I don't think singling out a particular section of the party for scrutiny, based on race, while presuming the rest of the party is behaving OK is necessarily productive.

I think Asians and Hispanics are almost the 'swing votes' of the ethnic minorities in the UK and US respectively. Black people vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and Labour. If someone can give me figures on South East asians, or Jewish voting figures in the UK, that will help. Anyway, in the UK, I think many Asians may often have ambitions similar to the 'American Dream', often owning successful small buisnesses, many of them often voting for Tories. In USA it's similar. Many Hispanics escaping from 'nasty socialist' countries will often vote for Republicans, often because they believe in the 'American Dream'. This is not to say that other minorities don't have ambitions, I think though there's perhaps a paticular  factor of 'our children need to go nto good schools, and become good doctors, lawyers etc.' in the Asian community.