UK employers fear worker shortages in new immigration plan

LONDON (AP) — Vegetables rotting in the fields, food going unprocessed, the elderly and disabled left without care.

That’s the alarming picture painted by some British employers about the impact of new U.K. immigration rules set to be introduced in less than a year.

Farms, food factories and care homes said Wednesday that they will face severe labor shortages under the government's plans to open Britain to skilled and educated immigrants while shutting out those its deems “low-skilled” workers.

The message from Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government was blunt: “Employers will need to adjust.”

“We need to shift the focus of our economy away from a reliance on cheap labor from Europe and instead concentrate on investment in technology and automation,” the government said in a paper laying out its immigration plans.

WHY ARE U.K. IMMIGRATION RULES CHANGING?

Britain’s exit from the European Union last month after 47 years of membership is triggering the biggest change to the country’s immigration rules for decades.

When Britain was part of the EU, citizens of the bloc’s 27 other countries were free to live and work in the U.K. and vice versa.EU workers came to Britain by the hundreds of thousands.

More than 3 million EU citizens currently live in the U.K. They are all entitled to stay. But once a post-Brexit transition period runs out on Dec. 31, that free movement will end and the new U.K. immigration rules will apply to EU and non-EU citizens alike.

Britain’s 2016 decision to leave the EU was driven in part by a belief that large-scale immigration had pushed down wages and increased joblessness among British-born workers.

Many economists say there is little evidence that’s true. The U.K. already has low unemployment, and...