Campaigners are calling for thousands of students who may have been wrongly accused of cheating in Home Office-mandated English-language tests to be given the opportunity to resit tests, so they can have a chance to clear their names and continue studying in the UK.

The Home Office accused more than 35,000 students of cheating in 2014 in the English-language proficiency tests some are required to take as part of their visa application process.

Some were taken to immigration detention, some returned to their home countries, while others remained but were prevented from working and studying. A campaign to clear their names will be launched on Tuesday in parliament.

The charity Migrant Voice argues that the Home Office based its accusation of cheating on unreliable evidence and is calling for all students affected to be allowed to resit the tests and resume their studies.

The charity will publish a report based on interviews with students, highlighting how lives were ruined by the decision to revoke visas.

“The knock-on effect has derailed careers and long-term aspirations. It has pushed people out of work and into poverty and debt. It has forced people out of accommodation. It has had severe impacts on physical and mental health, and family and community relationships,” the Migrant Voice report states.

Problems surfaced four years ago when a Home Office-contracted English language test was found to be flawed. A BBC Panorama programme aired an investigation in February 2014 into colleges offering Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) alleging systemic cheating.

Those interviewed by Migrant Voice for its report arrived in the UK between 2004 and 2011 and most sat the TOIEC exam as a prerequisite to taking up their places. Home Office officials decided that everyone who had taken this test over a three-year period should no longer be allowed to continue with their degree courses and they were told to leave the country.

The Migrant Voice report highlights peculiarities in some of the allegations, noting: “Some students were accused of cheating in a city or place they have never visited, or of taking the test on a date on which they did not take it. One student who has never ever taken the TOEIC test was among those accused.”

The Labour MP for East Ham Stephen Timms, who has a number of affected students in his constituency, said there was growing concern about the strength of the evidence on which the cheating accusation were based.

“There are now serious doubts about the reliability of the allegations. Courts have found that some were wrong. It has been suggested that up to 7,000 students have been wrongly accused. They have suffered grave injustice; many find themselves in an appalling situation. The home secretary has assured me in the House of Commons that he will take a careful look at what happened,” he said.

The accusations meant students were left without rights in the UK, unable to work or to access benefits. “They lost their job or were denied access to a job, spent all their savings, and have been living for years borrowing money from families and friends. Debts have mounted and they are unable to give the money back,” the report states.

“Although all the research participants were young and healthy when they arrived in the UK, most have started to experience health troubles since the allegation, in some cases during or after a period of detention. The large majority of participants have mental health conditions for which they are being treated.”

The director of Migrant Voice, Nazek Ramadan, said: “This cruel and unfair act of guilty-until-proven-innocent punishment has ruined the hopes, health, dreams, reputations, careers and lives of tens of thousands of students and has damaging implications for the reputation of our higher education. It’s a Windrush-style textbook example of thoughtless decision-making, compounded by the way the Home Office has made legal challenges difficult for the students.”

The Home Office said analysis of test results identified 33,725 invalid results and 22,694 questionable results . Those with questionable results were given the chance to resit a test or attend an interview before any action was taken against them.

A spokesperson said: “In February 2014, investigations into the abuse of English-language testing revealed systemic cheating, which was indicative of large-scale organised fraud. The government took immediate robust action on this, which has been measured and proportionate, and so far more than 20 people have received criminal convictions for their role in this deception.”