Reversing a policy that City Council members said dates back to the pushcarts of the 1930s, the city opened vending to illegal immigrants yesterday.

Mayor Bloomberg signed into law a bill repealing the provisions of the food and general vendor laws requiring that officials check the citizenship status of license applicants.

Vending was the last of more than 50 licenses the Department of Consumer Affairs regulates to use immigration status as a criterion for certification. That, Mr. Bloomberg said, contradicted an executive order he passed in September 2003 that forbids city employees from asking immigration status except in certain criminal investigations.

“This legislation will bring the vending law into conformity with the rest of city law and with the policy of this administration,” the mayor said.

The law was celebrated in immigrant communities, where legislators and local leaders have often criticized the mayor for not doing enough to enforce the executive order.

Critics of the law, meanwhile, said it goes against federal immigration laws and sends the wrong message.

“It’s a continuation of the city moving in the wrong direction,” the leader of the council’s Republican minority, James Oddo, said. “This is the last permit that allowed the city to ask the immigration status. Instead of removing it, I think we should be asking the status when we hand out all of our permits.”

Mr. Oddo, who represents a Staten Island district, added that a larger concern is that the city will be providing a new form of documentation to some illegal immigrants, which he said is a mistake in a post-September 11 context.

The city began limiting vending to citizens as far back as 1938, in an effort to clear the Lower East Side of Jewish and Italian peddlers, according to the council.

“This is a form of discrimination, this is a form of harassment,” a Brooklyn Democrat, Charles Barron, who was the council’s main sponsor of the law, said yesterday. “As an immigrant you can pay taxes, you can die in Iraq, but you can’t get a vending license. Come on now, that doesn’t make sense.”

Yesterday, dozens of flavored-ice sellers from Bushwick, knickknack hawkers from Chinatown, and flower vendors from the Bronx celebrated their victory together on the steps of City Hall. Men and women who spend their days walking the city’s streets crowded into the building’s domed entranceway, hoping to catch a glimpse of the mayor signing the law.

There was room for just a few at the signing ceremony, but a representative of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs made sure there were enough signing pens to go around afterward.

A woman who sells ices in summer and hot dogs in winter, Maria Samba, grasped her pen tightly as she cheered outside City Hall. The 49-year-old immigrant – who has three gold markings on her teeth, one in the form of a star – said she made two prayers of thanksgiving yesterday afternoon.

“I am thankful first to God and next to the mayor,” Ms. Samba, who moved to New York about 12 years ago from Cuenca, Ecuador, said in Spanish.

“We have fought for so many years to be where we are, all united,” she said.

She said her next stop was to pay a ticket for illegally vending, but outside City Hall, she was pure elation. “I won what I wanted,” she said. “I won my dream.”

Ms. Samba and the other vendors gathered at City Hall will still have a long wait before they can vend legally. Although there are thousands of illegal vendors working in the city, under the new law, not all of those who lack visas to work in America will qualify to apply for a license. Applicants will need a tax identification number, photo identification, and a certificate to collect sales tax. Many immigrant vendors lack those documents, according to Flor Bermudez, director of a vendor group in East Harlem, Esperanza del Barrio.

Even more problematic are the caps placed on licenses. Currently, licenses for food carts are limited to 3,000 and general licenses to 853. While a few vendors should be able to find a way to work legally by renting space from a vendor with a food cart license, most will be unable to work legally unless the caps are eased.

“It’s a positive step forward, but the main problem is there’s still a limit on licenses and permits,” the director of the Street Vendor Project at the nonprofit Urban Justice Center, Sean Basinski, said. Another bill still at the hearing stage at the council would increase the number of vending licenses issued.

VENDING AT A GLANCE

* General merchandise vending licenses are capped at 853, the same number since 1979. There is a waiting list of thousands.

* Pushcart food vending permits are capped at 3,000. A Department of Health license is also required.

* Paintings, illustrations, photographs, and books can be sold without obtaining a license. These items are protected by the First Amendment.

* 1,000 seasonal food vending permits, usable April through October, are awarded via a lottery system.