LANSING - Thousands of citizens are being denied Michigan Medicaid assistance due to a federal law requiring applicants to provide proof of citizenship, experts said.

The law, intended to prevent illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid, took effect in July 2006 and requires that applicants provide documents such as a passport or a birth certificate.

Critics say many low-income families cannot afford these documents and that the law has a negative effect in the state. In Michigan, the cost of a birth certificate is $10 and a passport is about $100.

"It is not stopping illegal aliens from accessing Medicaid programs," said Jan Hudson, senior planning and research associate for the Michigan League for Human Services. "We're spending millions of dollars for basically no gain."

The most recent sampling from the Office of Quality Assurance in the Department of Human Services (DHS) found only one citizenship error out of 1,752 cases between October 2004 and March 2006.

The documentation requirements have also led to "widespread declines" in Medicaid assistance, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office in Washington, D.C.

"This policy is resulting in U.S. citizens being denied benefits for which they are actually eligible for, and that's the bottom line," Hudson said. "They are citizens. They can't demonstrate it in the way that was mandated by the federal law."

The law however serves legal citizens of the United States and is important, said Silvia Warner, press secretary for U.S. Representative Mike Rogers, R-Brighton.

"Mike Rogers has been very supportive of legal immigration and people who seek citizenship," Warner said. "People who come into this country illegally have broken our laws. We need to make sure that our resources are going to people who live here legally."

The documentation requirement does not make it impossible to receive Medicaid, Warner said.

"There are other resources to help people get their state identification," Warner said. "We're not setting barriers that cannot be dealt with, those barriers can be overcome."

The Family Independence Program in DHS has also adopted the documentation requirements "for the sake of consistency and to reduce errors," department acting communications director Maureen Sorbet said. She said DHS is discussing the situation.

Jackie Doig, senior staff attorney for the Center for Civil Justice in Saginaw, said the requirements should be handled on a case-by-case basis, and that applying the requirements across the board is draconian.

"We have no quarrel with the state when information is requested for a specific reason, but to apply this rule across the board to everyone keeps a lot of people who are eligible from receiving necessary benefits."

She said the problem may be long-lasting.

"Because immigration is such a controversial topic right now, the chances of taking care of this issue is going to take some work," Doig said.

"Until policymakers realize that this is hurting citizens and it's not achieving the goal that is at least the stated goal, we're not going to get the changes that we need."

Michigan was one of the last states to comply with the federal mandate in April 2007.