Legal immigrants should get to vote, councilor says

A Boston city councilor wants the city to allow legal immigrants to vote in municipal elections, a move that could increase the number of eligible voters in the city by as much as a third and dramatically alter the city's political landscape.

A measure by Councilor at Large Felix D . Arroyo, supported by four other council members, would extend voting rights to about 95,000 immigrant residents who live in the country legally but are not citizens.

If approved by the council, the measure would require passage by the Legislature, which has turned away several similar petitions, from communities including Amherst and Cambridge.

But if Boston were to put its political weight behind it, immigrant rights groups say, it would give them impetus to mobilize around the issue, and some legislative observers said it could force lawmakers to take up a hot-button issue that has previously stalled.

"I think it's a good idea, and I think it's something we should be thinking about," said Representative Byron Rushing, Democrat of Boston and the second assistant majority leader. "We need to have some hard conversations and get back in Massachusetts to the welcoming position that we had for so many years in regard to immigrants."

Under Arroyo's proposal, immigrants could be added to the voting list as long as they sign a form indicating they are legal residents of Boston and "in good faith intend to become" US citizens.

They would remain on the Election Commission's list of eligible voters as long as they are legal residents in Boston; they would not be allowed to vote in state or federal elections, according to a draft of Arroyo's proposal.

"They are already paying taxes, they are already authorized to be here, and they are participants in the life of the city" socially and economically, Arroyo said, "so why not political?"

Several cities across the country have allowed all residents to vote regardless of their citizenship status. Chicago allows immigrants to vote in school elections. Several towns in Maryland allow noncitizens to vote in municipal elections, and similar initiatives are being considered in New York, San Francisco, and Denver.

Some groups have pushed for the moves arguing that noncitizen immigrants can pay property taxes and send children to public schools, giving them stakes in their communities that should also come with a right to vote. Opponents say it delegitimizes the current voting process by giving immigrants one of the major incentives of becoming a US citizen.

To move forward, Arroyo's measure must receive approval from a majority of councilors and be signed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who said he has not yet decided whether to support it. Menino has supported some other legislative efforts on behalf of immigrants, such as measures allowing in-state tuition and providing driver's licenses for immigrants.

Immigrant groups said that if Boston got behind an immigrant voting measure, they would rally around it.

"Politically it's a shot in the arm," said Ali Noorani, director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. "Boston is a big fish. It does change the dynamics, and it will force all of us -- legislators, activists, and concerned citizens -- to take the issue more seriously."

The proposal -- which is cosponsored by councilors Michael P . Ross, Chuck Turner, Charles C . Yancey, and Sam Yoon -- is expected to spark a vigorous debate when it comes before the council next week.

Boston's political power structure, which has long been based in the city's Irish and Italian enclaves, has been rapidly changing as voting demographics have shifted. Some see Arroyo's proposal as part of that transformation.

"This is the reality of Boston," said Giovanna Negretti, executive director of the voting advocacy group ¿Oiste?, which recently helped launch a program to recruit and train nonwhite political candidates to run for office.

"By adding these folks to the voting pool, it would reinforce the reality, which is that Boston is changing, and the political face has to change with it," she said. "We have to address things in a different way."

Arroyo became the first Latino on the City Council in 2003, and Andrea J. Cabral became Suffolk County's first black sheriff in 2005. Last year, Yoon became the first Asian-American on the City Council.

If legal immigrants were allowed to vote, it would have a large impact in areas that have surged in foreign-born population, such as Charlestown, East Boston, and Hyde Park. Even though those areas have grown in immigrant population, they have had only small increases in voting.

There are 151,836 foreign-born residents in Boston, according to a 2005 report by the city's Office of New Bostonians. Nearly two-thirds of those residents are not naturalized and currently are not eligible to vote. There are about 280,000 registered voters in Boston, according to Election Department figures.

"This would be the biggest impact to the universe of potential voters [in Boston] since women's suffrage," said Lawrence S. DiCara, a former city councilor and longtime political observer. "It would turn the electoral system on its head."

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.