Why are Sikh/Muslim/Hindu MPs more electable in the UK than the US?

[phk]

I'v always wondered why the UK is open to electing Hindus/Sikhs/Muslims to Parliament but its basically impossible for one to get elected in the US.

The UK has

Parmjit Dhanda, Labour MP.
Nirj Deva, Conservate MEP.
Syed Kamall, Conservative MEP
Piara Khabra, Labour MP.
Sadiq Khan, Labour MP.
Ashok Kumar, Labour MP.
Khalid Mahmood , Labour MP.
Shahid Malik , Labour MP.
Mohammad Sarwar, Labour MP.
Marsha Singh, Labour MP.
Parmjit Singh Gill, Liberal Democrats.
Shailesh Vara, Conservative MP.

The US has nobody.

 Even if Bobby Jindal didn't convert to Catholicism from his Hinduism and maintained all the same stances, he wouldn't even stand a prayer's chance.

[The Dowager Mod]

They are more concentrated there.

[Boris]

As an American Hindu, I can honestly say that I have no clue. I don't think many people have much of an opinion on Hinduism as they do on Islam. And Sikhs look like terrorists with their turbans

[Filuwaúrdjan]

First thing to do is to remove the MEP's (they're elected via a closed list). Deva was an M.P from 1992 until 1997 so he can be left on...

While Texasgurl is partly right about concentration, that isn't the whole of the matter...

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Dhanda represents Gloucester, a city that isn't exactly well known for having a big minority population. He suffered from some pretty clear racist voting in 2001 (much of it due to a racist campaign against him by local newspapers) but as he didn't suffer a swing against him at all last year, that seems to have gone away now.

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Deva used to be the M.P for Brentford & Isleworth (a traditional Con/Lab marginal in West London) although he suffered one of the worst poundings of any incumbent M.P since 1945 in 1997. No Tory could have held that seat that year o/c.

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Represents Southall (a heavily Asian suburb in West London), so a clear example of the concentration theory. Also looks like Yoda.

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Represents Tooting (a residential area in South London) which does have a significant Asian population, but nowhere near large enough for the concentration theory to hold.

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Represents an interesting seat south of Middlesbrough; it's made up of very white suburbs (almost all of the North East is very white o/c), some seaside resorts and some old iron mining villages.

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Represents Birmingham Perry Barr, which has a large minority population but is still white-majority. Has suffered from racist voting in both 2001 and 2005 (not as badly so in the latter).
The most Asian constituency in Birmingham (Sparkbrook & Small Heath) is represented by a certain Roger Godsiff (who is not from an ethnic minority...)

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Represents Dewsbury, a textile area in Yorkshire which does have a large Kashmiri population... but is still largely white and not exactly known for being stronghold of racial tolerance. Malik was blocked from representing his home town of Burnley (over the border in Lancashire) by the sudden imposition of an all-woman shortlist.

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Represents Glasgow Central which has a fairly large Asian population IIRC, but which is still largely white. Sarwar was the first Muslim M.P.

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Represents Bradford West, the most Asian third of a city well known for having a huge Asian population. Very few of them are Sikh's though; Singh would have done better in all three of his elections had he been white.
Interestingly enough, there was an attempt to rig him out of his seat in 2005.

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Former M.P (elected in a by-election in 2003, defeated in 2005) for Leicester South, which has a large Gujarati population, which voted for him in 2003, but which swung back to Labour in 2005. The current M.P for the seat is a Unitarian, btw.

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Represents Cambridgshire North West. Which is very white...

[minionofmidas]

I've sort of wondered myself... not so much in comparison with the US, but with mainland Europe.
The UK has 1.6 mio Muslims. That's a lower Muslim share than France or Germany or Belgium or Switzerland or or or. (Not all that much lower than Germany, I guess, though. Anyways I'm sure the UK does have much the highest Sikh and Hindu percentages in Europe.)

While Germany does have six (no wait, seven since a few days ago ) Muslim MPs, the first ever was elected in 1994, and the figure stood at three til 2005. - All but one elected via closed lists. (Ekin Deligöz directly represents a constituency in Lower Saxony IIRC. She doesn't exactly maintain a high profile though.)

Part of the reason is concentration (and the election system, without which concentration wouldn't matter), yeah.

The biggest reason though is simply that, in the UK, Commonwealth citizens immediately have the right to vote.
In other countries, Muslim immigrants had to stay for many years before even being able to obtain citizenship by a complicated process. Heck, in Germany (until 2001) and Switzerland, not even native born children of non-citizens, no matter how long residents of the country, are citizens. Ie, a large proportion of the Muslim population remains excluded from the political process.
Obviously, that situation would stunt any attempts at political integration.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The biggest reason though is simply that, in the UK, Commonwealth citizens immediately have the right to vote.

They also tend to be much more interested in local politics than whites; there were quite a few white majority (or white plurality at least) wards in West Yorkshire where Asians almost certainly made up a majority of voters this year.

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Interestingly enough, the Heath Government seriously considered setting something like that up over here.

[minionofmidas]

The biggest reason though is simply that, in the UK, Commonwealth citizens immediately have the right to vote.

They also tend to be much more interested in local politics than whites; there were quite a few white majority (or white plurality at least) wards in West Yorkshire where Asians almost certainly made up a majority of voters this year.

This strikes a chord. In low turnout elections like local and European in working class precincts, as a pollworker you see next-to-no ethnic Germans under 60 these days.
They're there. They just don't bother to vote.
It was obviously not possible for me to steal the voter register with marks for who had voted and who hadn't (and thus compile these stats) for the precinct I sat on at the local and Bundestag elections, but I am reasonably certain that turnout WAS higher among people without German names. (Notice that, in local elections, all EU citizens are allowed to vote.)

[afleitch]

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Represents Glasgow Central which has a fairly large Asian population IIRC, but which is still largely white. Sarwar was the first Muslim M.P.

You are spot on with Govan. The SNP of course, also have significant Muslim support in Govan and in other areas of Glasgow. What is also interesting, which I remember discussing before, is the large middle class Asian community in Newton Mearns which, at least until 1997, were generally Conservative voters. The different demographics between Glasgow Muslims and their English city counterparts can be quite striking.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The different demographics between Glasgow Muslims and their English city counterparts can be quite striking.

At a guess that's probably because the Muslims that moved to Glasgow were upwardly-mobile types and fairly well educated?
After all, most of the Muslim population in English cities came over here to work in various low-order manufacturing jobs (and there are still a couple of sweatshops left in inner Bradford; mostly making children's clothing and employing only a handful of people), something that Glasgow c.1960 didn't have a lot of (at least compared to cities down here). Glasgow is still not the easiest place to get to from an English port by land, even now o/c.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This strikes a chord. In low turnout elections like local and European in working class precincts, as a pollworker you see next-to-no ethnic Germans under 60 these days.
They're there. They just don't bother to vote.
It was obviously not possible for me to steal the voter register with marks for who had voted and who hadn't (and thus compile these stats) for the precinct I sat on at the local and Bundestag elections, but I am reasonably certain that turnout WAS higher among people without German names. (Notice that, in local elections, all EU citizens are allowed to vote.)

Interesting; why the difference in the franchise for local and national elections? (o/c there's a slight difference between the two here; students can vote in local elections both at home at in their Uni city).

[minionofmidas]

"Votes for foreigners" is essentially a lefty reform idea of the 80s and early 90s (basically a surrogate for a healty naturalization rate, which Germany just didn't have back then.) "Votes in local elections for EU citizens" is what came of it - introduced at different times in different states; I'd have to check to make sure it actually exists in all states now.
Schleswig-Holstein actually once passed a law granting all resident foreigners the vote in state elections, but it was struck down by the state supreme court.

The franchise for EU elections is again different... citizens of other EU states are supposed to vote in their home country's embassy or consulate, for their home country's MEPs. However, you CAN apply to be struck from the register at the consulate and be included in your precinct of residency instead, and thus vote for German MEPs.
Few people bother, but some do.

Somewhere between 1997 and 1999 Hessen also passed a law lowering the voting age for local elections to 16. It promptly got thrown out by the incoming CDU government after 1999, without having ever been used. For constitutional reasons though, the voting age at the 2001 local elections actually lay at 17 years and a 100-odd days - ie, 16 years at the time the voting age was highered again.

[minionofmidas]

I have checked, and it is every state nowadays.
Mecklenburg-Lower Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, and North Rhine Westphalia have local votes from age 16, btw.

[they don't love you like i love you]

The US will probalby have theits first Muslim in Congress after this election (and in the district I will be living in in 2008 actually...)