The deportation threats wrongly sent to members of the Windrush generation of immigrants “should come as a warning to European citizens” living in the UK after Brexit, according to a Belfast-based immigration practitioner.

Nick Bennett, secretary of the Immigration Practitioners’ Group NI, told Irish Legal News that the Windrush crisis highlighted how poorly equipped the Home Office is to deal with the much larger number of EU citizens who will be living in the UK after Brexit.

Just tens of thousands of people from the Windrush generation are affected by the current crisis, but there are millions of EU citizens living in the UK.

Mr Bennett is a former European caseworker with the Home Office in Liverpool and is currently training as a solicitor with HHD Solicitors in Belfast.

He said: “The Windrush debacle sets alarm bells ringing as the Home Office has abjectly failed to cope with this crisis and has simply never logistically dealt with as many cases at once that are going to be coming up for the Europeans.

“At the very least, there’s going to be ones that slip through the crack, or ones where they don’t get their status sorted for six months, or a year, or two years - or who knows, to be honest.”

Mr Bennett expressed scepticism over the extent to which the Home Office would be able to improve its Brexit readiness following the Windrush experience due to the legacy of spending cuts under home secretaries Theresa May and Amber Rudd.

“It is clear the Home Office are struggling with the volume of applications …”

He said: “The Home Office significantly reduced staff in their Liverpool, Croydon and Sheffield offices in an effort to save costs and now simply can’t cope with the volume of work notwithstanding the hiring of agency staff, which has led to a bigger and bigger backlog.

“As a practitioner who’s been doing this for a number of years, it is clear the Home Office are struggling with the volume of applications and cases aimed to be dealt with within six months are now taking up to a year or more.”

However, Mr Bennett said there are “a lot of Europeans who are entitled to permanent residency and British citizenship before Brexit happens”, which would insulate them from any adverse Brexit impact.

He urged EU citizens currently living and working in the UK not to rely exclusively on the advice of the Home Office and to contact solicitor firms or their relevant Law Society right away - in particular to beat the inevitable rush of applications to the Home Office next year.

Mr Bennett said: “The first port of call would be contacting a firm of solicitors or the Law Society, to seek legal clarity and formalise their legal status.”

He added: “They should take the Windrush event as a lesson to realise that the Home Office are maybe not as organised as they say they are.”