'It feels safer round here since the refugees came'

Eye witness, Birmingham: Asylum-seekers may not be wanted in Europe, but a British city welcomes them.

Nobody can tell Edna that refugees are a bad thing. "You used to be so afraid to go past that place," says the elderly lady, catching her breath on a bench opposite the anonymous red brick building that houses them. She didn't like the idea of the former YWCA being turned into a reception centre for asylum-seekers. "They are not like us, I'm sorry, it's true. But things are much more peaceful around here since they came."

There used to be prostitutes and drug dealers working out of the semi-derelict hostel in a side road off one of the thunderous main routes into Birmingham city centre. Today there is hardly anyone about except Edna (not her real name, she doesn't feel that safe), myself and a woman who walks past in a burqa with only her eyes showing.

Popular – or tabloid – wisdom says asylum-seekers are "scroungers, beggars and crooks", in the words of The Sun, and ought to be sent back where they came from or, at least, kept out of my backyard. Only last week the former cabinet minister Kenneth Clarke warned of an uprising in the rural lanes of his constituency if a planned reception centre was built there. But they tell a different story in Birmingham, which has received 12,000 new arrivals in two years; and particularly in the terraced houses and tower blocks next to Rose Lodge.

"When it was announced that asylum-seekers were coming, you can imagine how much that raised the local temperature," says the MP Gisela Stuart. "But rather than being a disruptive influence it has proved positive. Previously that building was a real troublespot. Now it is run by professionals who are doing a good job."

I'd love to be able to tell you that for myself, but the Home Office banned me from going in. The private company that operates the hostel was forbidden to answer the simplest of questions. I do know, however, that there are 128 bedrooms inside, occupied by people who have usually just been bussed up from Dover or another point of entry in the South. There are English classes, computers with internet access and advice on how best to live in this foreign land. The next step, after a week or so, is to share a house, in what one worker called "typical student-style accommodation".

Mohsen Keiany lives like that and doesn't like it much but the alternative is far worse. He fled Iran hidden in a lorry and was let out 20 days later, after a long journey by road and sea, to find himself standing at a motorway service station somewhere in southern England. "I did not know where I was, I could not make myself understood," says Mr Keiany, 32, a lecturer in fine art. He was also a painter, a newspaper cartoonist and a supporter of the democratic movement. The latter put his life in danger, he says, forcing him to get out of Iran in such a hurry there was no time to say goodbye to his wife or two young children.

Two years later, still awaiting the result of his appeal, Mr Keiany lives on vouchers worth £36.54 a week, of which £10 is exchangeable for cash. This is 70 per cent less than income support and some way below the accepted poverty line.

"I try to sell my paintings to earn a little money to buy materials so I can continue to paint," says the artist, whose single room serves as both bedroom and studio. His work is on display in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and it is stunning: elegant, icon-like figures surrounded by dancing horses. Academics and artists have written to the Home Office in support of his appeal. "Sometimes I think it would be better to be back in Iran and dead," he says. "I am not allowed to work. But I have also met some wonderful people here, who have welcomed me."

Birmingham has been a multicultural city since the arrival of the Irish in the 16th century, says Malcolm Dick, who has written a book about it. "This place is extraordinarily diverse, every religion in the world is represented among its million people. Refugees have shaped the culture, industry and architecture of the city."

Colmore Row and the Martineau shopping complex are both named after families of Huguenots who escaped from France. Jews driven out of eastern Europe revived the jewellery quarter. Alec Issigonis designed the Mini car while living here, having fled Turkey. "History may be why we are so able to welcome new arrivals."

Not everybody is, of course. Banners welcoming refugees to an event at the cathedral were torn down last week. And a group of young men chant abuse and right-wing slogans as I leave Centenary Square, where Mr Keiany is helping out at a festival called Celebrate Sanctuary. Somalians dance to Kurdish music as a young English skate-punk emerges from a tent that recreates the way asylum-seekers are treated when they arrive in this country. He looks drawn. The event is one of many held all over Britain at the end of a week organised by the Refugee Council to celebrate the contribution of those who seek help here.

"Every group of refugees which has arrived in Britain over the centuries has had to overcome hostility and prejudice," says the programme. "And every group of refugees has gone on to make an enormous contribution to the country that gave them sanctuary. There is no doubt today's refugees will do the same."