Businesses will “go to the wall” if the supply of EU workers is cut off under a more complicated immigration system, warns Fife Migrants Forum.
Colm Wilson, its interim manager, said there will be grave consequences if Brexit forces employers to become entangled in red tape in their pursuit of labour from further afield.
He delivered the warning as Holyrood’s EU committee was told how a system similar to a points-based one could restrict the vital flow of EU migrants into Scotland.
Mr Wilson told MSPs: “If I take for example some of the employers in Fife, they tell me over and over again that businesses just wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for migrants.
“If it’s complex and difficult to employ employees from the Philippines or wherever then businesses will go to the wall. It works now because it is simple.”
The Leave campaign said an Australian-style points-based scheme would better match overseas workers with jobs and end the discrimination against non-EU nationals.
Earlier, Mr Wilson credited migrants with saving Kirkcaldy High Street.
He said: “In the last year or so if you take Kirkcaldy, we saw a High Street that was just totally dying and now we have got seven or eight businesses that have been started up by migrants that have arrived in Fife employing, not a lot of people, but providing employment.”
