NEW YORK — New York City, long a beacon for immigrants, is on the cusp of becoming the largest places in the country to give noncitizens the right to vote in local elections.

Legally documented, voting-age noncitizens comprise nearly 1 in 9 of the city’s

7 million voting-age inhabitants. Under a bill nearing approval, some 800,000 noncitizens would be allowed to cast ballots in elections to pick the mayor, City Council members and other municipal officeholders. Noncitizens still wouldn’t be able to vote for president or members of Congress in federal races, or in the state elections that pick the governor, judges and legislators.

Little stands in the way of the effort becoming law. The measure has broad support within the council, which is expected to ratify the proposal Thursday.

The law would give an electoral voice to the many New Yorkers who love the city and have made it their permanent home, but can’t easily become U.S. citizens or would rather remain citizens of their home nations for various reasons.

It would also cover Dreamers like Eva Santos, 32, who was brought to the U.S. by her parents at age 11 as an unauthorized immigrant, but wasn’t able to vote like her friends or go to college when she turned 18.

“It was really hard for me to see how my other friends were able to make decisions for their future, and I couldn’t,” said Santos, now a community organizer.

More than a dozen communities across the United States allow noncitizens to vote, including 11 towns in Maryland and two in Vermont.

San Francisco, through a ballot initiative ratified by voters in 2016, began allowing noncitizens to vote in school board elections — which was also true in New York City until it abolished its boards in 2002 and gave control of schools to the mayor.

The move in Democrat-controlled New York City is a counterpoint to restrictions being enacted in some states, where Republicans have espoused unsupported claims of rampant fraud by noncitizens in elections.

Last year, voters in Alabama, Colorado and Florida ratified measures specifying that only U.S. citizens can vote, joining Arizona and North Dakota in adopting rules that would preempt any attempts to pass laws like the one in New York City.