Britain backtracks over listing foreign workers

The British government steps back from a plan to make employers list their foreign workers as it talks tough on immigration following the Brexit vote, after a backlash among business leaders.

“We are not going to be asking companies to list or name or publish or identify their foreign workers,” Defence Secretary Michael Fallon tells BBC radio, saying the proposal had been “misinterpreted.”

The idea of making employers publish a record of how many non-British citizens they hire was floated at the annual conference of Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative party, which closed on Wednesday.

But it was swiftly and widely condemned as divisive and discriminatory, and the British Chambers of Commerce warned against making a global workforce a “badge of shame.”

— AFP