The House Divided.(immigration policy, United Kingdom)(Brief Article)

When Amit Roy came up with the idea for an Asian Rich List, his editor at The Sunday Times of London dismissed it as "Minority stuff, old boy." Eleven years later, Britain's Richest Asian 200, published by the Asian newspaper Eastern Eye, is slick, glossy and packed with multimillionaires and billionaires, IT whiz kids, pharmaceutical tycoons, real-estate magnates and catering czars. Politicians scope the list to raise funds; Prime Minister Tony Blair attended its annual launch three years back. "The list undermined the argument that Asians were economic refugees sponging off the state," notes Roy. "It showed they were big players, employing people and changing the economic landscape."

As Britain gropes its way from aging welfare state to entrepreneurial society, Asian immigrants are giving it a huge boost. They began their ascent up the socioeconomic ladder just as London was regaining its position as global financial center in the mid-1980s. The "big bang" deregulation opened the London financial center to foreign buyers, and helped lure wealthy Asians to the capital. The free market nurtured by Margaret Thatcher made it possible for all small businesses to thrive, Asians included. Now, under Blair, Britain is as enamored as ever of the free market, but as ambivalent as ever about freedom of immigration. Blair's policies would essentially create one of the European societies most open to highly skilled workers and entrepreneurs, and least open to political refugees and menial workers.

This split goes way back. Though Thatcher and the Asian immigrants both championed entrepreneurialism, theirs was an accidental alliance at best. Thatcher's Union Jack-waving nationalism, curbs on immigrants from nonwhite commonwealth countries and hostility to legal protections for equal opportunity in the workplace hardly won her popularity among minorities. But Asian merchants loved the fact that she wanted to cut their taxes. "Thatcher spoke the language of the small shopkeeper, and it resonated with Asians," says political philosopher Lord Bhiku Parekh, author of "Rethinking Multiculturalism."

Britain has been far more open to migrant cultures than France, where there was statist pressure to assimilate, or Germany, where until very recently it was impossible for immigrants to become citizens. In 1948 Britain granted passports to all immigrants from its former empire, the commonwealth countries, and allowed the newcomers to found their own religious schools and retain their customs. They have remained separate ever since, working parallel to but not with Britain's recent pro- business governments. Asians rarely turn for advice to British institutions like the Small Business Service or the Chamber of Commerce, relying on their own families or communities for capital and labor.

The result is immigrant business networks that have helped push Britain more rapidly toward the free market. South Asians who began arriving in the 1960s and '70s as cheap labor were soon starting their own stores. They set an 18-hour-a-day pace that forced this once drowsy nation to abandon ...