U.K. home secretary faces backlash over Brexit immigration plan

LONDON — One of Britain’s most senior politicians was caught in an escalating argument about immigration Thursday, after a company she claimed recruited most of its staff from eastern Europe said 75% of its employees were British.

Amber Rudd, the home secretary, proposed that companies disclose what percentage of their workers are foreign in a bid to make them train and employ more locals, in an announcement during the ruling Conservative Party’s annual conference.

The plan sparked a backlash from individuals and organizations including the opposition Labour Party, which said it would "fan the flames of xenophobia and hatred.” The outcry prompted Rudd to tell her critics "don't call me a racist."

Rudd visited Collins and Hayes, a company that manufactures sofas in Hastings, southern England, in August last year.

She told BBC radio Wednesday that the firm, which she did not name, “recruit(s) almost exclusively from Romania and Poland, where there are people that have had experience in factories building these sofas ... they didn't even consider training locally.”

Matt O'Flynn, who runs Collins and Hayes, told the BBC Thursday that he found Rudd’s comments "very disappointing" and that his firm was "committed to working with the local community.”

Rudd also announced new visa restrictions on college students from non-European Union countries in a bid to reduce their numbers, to the dismay of many students and academics.

Birmingham University Chancellor Lord Karan Bilimoria told the BBC that international students create more than 130,000 jobs and contribute billions to the economy.

“International students make a significant contribution to our universities financially and in research, as well as having a wider positive economic impact. They should be welcomed, not demonized,” said Scottish lawmaker James Dornan, of the Scottish National Party, according to Holyrood magazine.

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May announced at the conference that she would trigger the Brexit — British exit from the EU — process by the end of March 2017.

May said the party would "restore fairness" and called Labour the “nasty party,” in her closing speech at the gathering in Birmingham, central England, on Wednesday.

She said the referendum was not just a vote for Brexit, but was about a sense "that many people have today that the world works well for a privileged few, but not for them."