What voters have wanted for a decade has been a points based immigration system which facilitated economically prosperous immigration that met the skill needs of the economy while preventing additional strain on housing and public services that would disproportionately harm the most vulnerable. The case for it is eminently sensible and accepted by the political establishment for non-EU migration.

The problem is that we aren't allowed to have that immigration system without leaving the single market, because freedom of movement is asserted as being absolute by the EU with absolutely no negotiation on the subject being allowed or possible, other than all of the areas where people have unofficially undermined free movement and it has gone unpunished, but they weren't British and they didn't ask permission, so it was fine.

Voters who cared about the immigration issue were then given a binary choice between unconditionally accepting the status quo with unlimited European migration for a generation with the remain campaign avoiding the issue like the plague, or leaving the single market and attempting to negotiate a better option that was deliberately vague and undefined and open to utopian assertions and scaremongering predictions by both sides.

The idea that Leave voters are all just ignorant racists is a convenient scapegoating tactic employed to delegitimise their concerns and avoid admitting the reality, that the government and EU repeatedly failed to deliver what the people made clear they wanted while repeatedly manufacturing consent for the status quo until they were given one meaningful vote to do anything about it, which they took.

It was an entirely sensible decision for Leave voters to take