They came seeking our help. We refused them money and dignity - and now we're throwing them out on the street

"I feel like I am in the middle of nowhere," he says. "I have no hope, I have no sense of belonging."

Olawale – who does not want his surname to be used – is not entitled to any state support as he has had his application for asylum turned down. According to officials, it is safe for him to return to his home country. But he is so scared of what could happen if he goes back that he'd rather live destitute on the streets of Scotland while fighting his appeal against being returned to Nigeria.

Indeed, in some circumstances the country of origin can refuse to take back the "failed asylum seeker" leaving them in a stateless no-man's land.

New research to be published this week has found many other asylum seekers or refugees are in a similar position. A week-long snapshot survey identified one in four of those who seek help from refugee support agencies in Glasgow as destitute – a total of 140 people.

The study, carried out on behalf of the Scottish Refugee Council, Refugee Survival Trust and British Red Cross, found one client who had been destitute for more than six years. Eleven had dependent children, while five women were pregnant. Around one in four had mental health problems.

Study author Morag Gillespie, of the Scottish Poverty Information Unit at Glasgow Caledonian University, said a substantial number of people had "absolutely nothing".

"The fact we managed to find 140 people in one week is a big worry," she said. "I think there is a government position about refused asylum seekers which accepts this is the situation people are going to get into, if they are not returning home.

"In some cases what people are arguing is that it is very hard – if possible at all – for them to return home, so they are stuck in limbo. They have got nothing here, but nor can they get home either."

According to the criteria used in the research, someone is classed as destitute if they have no access to benefits, UK Border Agency support or income and are homeless on the streets, temporarily staying with friends or have accommodation but no means of sustaining it.

Around two-thirds of those found to be destitute had been refused asylum, but just over one in 10 had been granted refugee status and around a similar number were awaiting a decision on their asylum application.

Gillespie added: "What we have done is exposed the tip of the iceberg and I think there is more research to be done on the issue."

Concerns are growing that many more asylum seekers will be left destitute due to a change in the management of accommodation for asylum seekers in Glasgow.

Charity Ypeople – formerly the YMCA – has lost the contract to provide such housing, which will pass to multinational corporation Serco at the end of August.

It means refused asylum seekers are facing eviction as the charity had a policy of continuing to provide support, including housing, to those whose applications to stay in the UK has been refused and had no other means of support. The charity, however, can no longer afford to maintain this policy due to the loss of the contract, and is already having to start evicting "failed" asylum seekers. It is thought at least 80 people at least could be affected.

The Scottish charity Positive Action in Housing is trying to raise funds to provide small handouts to those who are destitute to help them survive and arrange for volunteers to take people into their own homes. Executive director Robina Qureshi said they were being forced to "pick up the pieces".

"What do you do when someone comes to your door and they are saying they don't have anywhere to stay, they are not allowed government benefits and they can't return to their country?" she said.

"There are people who cannot go back, the UK Border Agency knows it, but it is very difficult to gather evidence on individual cases."

Qureshi also criticised Ypeople for carrying out evictions, saying: "What is a charity doing putting people out knowing that they are going to be made destitute?"

Joe Connolly, chief executive of Ypeople, confirmed the charity had now started legal proceedings over evictions. He claims the charity is being forced to begin evictions as it does not have the money to continue to provide accommodation. The charity's contract will, however, end on August 26 and pass to Serco.

Connolly is using what time remains to try to invest what money there is in other services if forcible evictions can be avoided. However, he holds out little hope of this happening.

"The money we would spend on the legal process [for evictions], I am prepared to put into a destitution service which could probably run a night shelter for six months to a year," he said.

"I wouldn't want anyone in this country to be destitute, whether they are an asylum seeker, refugee or one of the indigenous population. It is inhumane to have a system in the country where a decision is made ... and then they are just cut adrift."

John Wilkes, chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council, said the contract change had highlighted the fact the asylum process in the UK allows people to be forced into destitution.

"In a sense it has thrown a spotlight on this problem with the UK asylum system, which has probably been a bit more hidden perhaps [in Scotland]," he said.

"There will be a continual number of people coming through the process who will similarly face no support at the end and possible destitution.

"It is an ongoing process, because of the way the UK asylum system is currently designed."

Wilkes said problematic issues around the asylum process included whether people get a fair hearing and access to proper legal support, with around 30% of negative decisions getting overturned at the appeal stage.

He added: "The UK Government feels that by putting into place these sorts of policies, it will encourage people to go home who may be reluctant to do so.

"I think the evidence that is out there suggests that doesn't happen in any case.

"It has failed as a policy and the practical reality is for large numbers of people in that scenario, they can't go home."

According to latest figures, just over 2000 people seeking asylum were being accommodated in Glasgow at the end of 2011. Next Saturday, June 16, a demonstration will be held in the city's George Square in support of their plight, organised by the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees.

Dave Moxham, deputy general secretary at the STUC, which is supporting the protest, called for a more progressive and sympathetic asylum system.

He added: "To push someone into destitution probably increases the likelihood they will abscond or do other things that the asylum system doesn't want them to do.

"So we think it is self-defeating both in terms of their welfare and in terms of the effective administration of an asylum policy too."

A spokeswoman for the UK Border Agency said all of those facing eviction due to the housing contract change in Glasgow have had their asylum claims refused.

"The courts have confirmed that they have no need for protection and no legal right to stay in the UK," she said.

"There are routes of return home for all the nationalities in this group. No-one facing eviction need face destitution if they comply with the law and the decisions of our courts and go home."

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "Immigration and asylum is reserved to Westminster and the Scottish Government has no role to intervene.

"We regularly meet the UK Border Agency and local partners and we will be monitoring the situation closely."

Meanwhile, Olawale is planning to see a lawyer this week in the hope he can lodge a fresh appeal to stay. In the evenings, the only place he has to sleep is a night shelter. He is receiving psychological help and needs medication to help him sleep.

He said: "I really want to become part of the community and given the chance to contribute positively to it.

"The Home Office sometimes gets it wrong judging cases and saying a country is safe, because there are internal problems that can never be revealed to the outside world. People are afraid to speak out as they are afraid of their lives.

"I can bear it, but I don't know for how long. Sometimes I go round the streets and I cry like a baby."

How can a country like ours take such unhuman actions?

By Archbishop Mario Conti

Just occasionally a story emerges, which initially sounds too unlikely, too horrendous, to be true. "I must have missed something," I thought, as I read, with growing disbelief, the details of a human rights scandal likely to occur later this summer, not in a far-off dictatorship, but in Glasgow.

Put briefly, what is envisaged is the eviction and compulsory destitution of around 100 persons who have come to this country seeking asylum. They will be ejected from the housing currently available to them, and forced on to the streets; already they are forbidden from working, are given no mainstream social security benefit, no clothing, no food, no shelter. The latest threat is that they will be thrown into destitution.

The persons involved are refugees whose applications for asylum have been refused. Many come from strife-torn places such as Afghanistan and Iraq and others have no identity papers and thus cannot be repatriated, since some of the countries to which they would be deported will not accept them on UK Government-provided papers.

Until now they have lived in Glasgow, housed by Ypeople (formerly the YMCA). But this summer the contract for housing asylum seekers in Scotland has been switched to another provider – Serco, a multinational company which, among other activities, currently runs Scotland's prisoner tagging system.

And since Ypeople (which operated a "no evictions" policy) must return the houses currently being used by the asylum seekers to their original owners by August 20, such persons, whose only crime is to have been born into danger and poverty, and to have come to this country seeking safety and betterment, face being thrown on to the street.

It seems utterly inconceivable that a country with such strong traditions of welfare provision, fairness and social cohesion could allow innocent persons to be evicted, banned from working, left without food and shelter, and effectively eliminated from society. But that is exactly what is likely to happen – unless something is done.

The obligation is on Scottish civic society to prevent this humanitarian scandal. Surely Serco, Ypeople and the owners of the houses could, over the next 10 weeks, negotiate a solution whereby the leases are transferred from one agency to another without evictions?

The situation is, of course, not helped by the culture of the day. The demeaning term "failed asylum seekers" is spat in the faces of these people by sections of the media whose barely concealed xenophobia helps foster the unhealthy climate in which the current plans have grown.

Yet who among us, on looking back into our own family history, could deny that the motives that brought these vulnerable souls to our shores are the same ones that motivated our grandparents or great-grandparents to leave their native lands – namely, the seeking of security and betterment for themselves and their families?

And who can justify a policy that discriminates between persons, not on the basis of need, but on the arbitrary placing of borders? Migrants from within the European Union are allowed to reside here, while those, often in far greater need, are excluded because they happen to have been born outside its confines.

Just last month, Pope Benedict made clear the Catholic Church's clear teaching that governments must show humanity when dealing with such people. He said: "Exodus to the great cities, armed conflict, hunger and pandemics, which affect so many people, give rise to new forms of poverty in our time. Therefore it is necessary for states to ensure that legislation does not increase social inequality and that people can live dignified lives."

Alas, the UK Government is pursuing a different agenda. Far from allowing people to live the "dignified lives" to which the Pope refers, we are seeing the resumption of dawn raids. Four family homes in the Glasgow area have recently been invaded by police and UK Border Agency officials while children were getting ready for school. I cannot imagine most of our fellow citizens feel comfortable about such activities being carried out in their name.

There is now an urgent need to let Her Majesty's Government, the UK Border Agency and the housing providers know that we require them to avert the humanitarian crisis which is about to happen, and happen in this Jubilee year in which we should be celebrating our country's noblest traditions.

"I was a stranger and you took me in," we read in Matthew's Gospel. The offering of shelter and hospitality to the needy is not only a Christian imperative, it is an act of basic humanity. No-one is exempt from our duty of care, and no-one is exempt from the duty of caring. That's a message that the authorities need to hear loud and clear, before it's too late.

CASE STUDY: 'I fight for human rights in my country – but in this country I am less than human '

Iraqi Kurd Karzan Omer is one of many facing destitution due to the ending of the Ypeople contract. The 31-year-old, who fled his country along with his wife after receiving death threats, still bears the scars of a beating which almost killed him and he fears he will be killed if he returns.

Omer has received no state support for the past 10 months since his asylum application was rejected and he relies on around £30 a week from a charity, Positive Housing in Action, and food handouts.

Now, as he awaits the outcome of his attempt to secure legal aid for an appeal, he faces the prospect of homelessness and destitution.

"For 10 months my support has stopped and I have had no money since August," he said. "I don't know what happens, I am just waiting and it makes me very anxious."

Omer says he knows of many failed asylum seekers who have already left the surrounding flats and the uncertainty has made many fearful of the future.

Ako Zada, 34, a journalist and human rights activist, also from Kurdistan, is another refused asylum who is facing eviction. He said he fled to Scotland in March last year due to death threats received from government security forces after he led a peaceful demonstration against corruption.

"I don't have any support, every day I worry about that, and how I can survive," he said. "Sometimes I go to a community centre to take some food, or a church, but sometimes I feel I can't accept support from people because of my dignity.

"It is difficult for me because in my country I fight for people, I fight for human rights. But here I think it is shameful for me, it is not nice. I think I am less than human in this country."

Zada has applied for legal aid for an appeal, which could take up to two months, and spends his time volunteering, including being a student mentor and a researcher for a healthy living project in Glasgow.

He said the real scale of the problem of destitution was unknown as many people were afraid to speak out.

"I am worried," he said. "We don't know what will happen. A lot of people don't want to tell the others about being evicted, they say maybe the Home Office will arrest them or make it difficult. Day by day the destitute people will be increased by the Home Office."

He added: "If you don't have a place, it is difficult. Maybe you can live in the street or in the church shelter or with some friends sometimes. It is not easy."

Zada said the Home Office had told him he could relocate to another part of Iraq, but he said he feared Kurdish security agencies who had threatened him would still find him.

"They said you can hide yourself but I am told them I am a journalist and activist," he said.

"I want to continue my responsibility and my work, I have to continue to defend the rights of people or do anything that I can for people."