Posted on 01/02/2017 10:51:02 AM PST by Olog-hai
Rossello Jr. may be a rat by he was preferable choice in the PNP primary (the other was Pierluisi) and he ran with Gonzalez (R) who crushed the rat option (running mate of Pierluisi) in her primary.
I can only support statehood if careful study determines the state would be competitive. Can’t just hand the rats 2 Senate seats. The key, I think, would be the % of PPD voters that might vote Republican. I’ve been led to believe this # would be significantly higher than zero. I’ve heard everything from “it would vote similar to Louisiana (this was before the recent strong GOP trend there) to “it would be the least Republican state”. The fact is we just don’t know, and I for one would need to know.
I’d also mandate increased use of the English language.
Also there oughta be a clear up/down referendum on the question of statehood, the previous referendum was a joke, the will of the people regarding statehood is not clear.
Since the US Virgin Islands are so close, why not include them in the new State?
They are certainly very heavily rat, so screw them!
I’d give them back to Denmark in exchange for some
chocolate.
“I am proposing that they would have to choose citizenship at that time but at some point they would be an independent country and their status finally determined.”
Each Puerto Rican would be free to renounce their US citizenship, but they could not be forced to renounce their citizenship.
Renouncing their US citizenship would be foolish as they could be dual US/PR citizens.
At the end of the Clinton Administration (IIRC), the Presidential Task Force on Puerto Rico (or whatever it was called) released a “final report” (although the task force continued under President Bush) that asserted, among other things, that if Puerto Rico was granted independence then those persons that chose to remain in Puerto Rico and took on the new Puerto Rican citizenship would be deemend no longer to be U.S. citizens. The legal rationale for this novel assertion was the precedent of when Congress granted independence to the Philippines. While Filipinos were not U.S. citizens, they were non-citizen “nationals of the United States” (as were Puerto Ricans prior to 1917 and as are American Samoans to this day), a legal status that allows free travel to the United States proper but does not give them the other privikeges of citizenship (right to vote in U.S. elections in their state of residence, etc.), and the federal law that gave the Philippines its independence stripped Filipinos of their U.S. “non—citizen nationality” if they chose to live in the Philippines and thus become Filipino citizens. The Presidential Task Force asserted that, similarly, Congress could declare U.S. citizens that reside in Puerto Rico after the island become independent, and thus became citizens of Puerto Rico, ipso facto would be renouncing their U.S. citizenship.
While such legal conclusion is based on the precedent of the prior time that a bona fide U.S. territory (not counting UN Trust Territories that the U.S. administered after WWII) was granted independence, it is inconsistent with SCOTUS decisions regarding how U.S. citizenship may be renounced. In Afroyim v. Rusk, SCOTUS ruled that, despite what our passport says, the mere fact that a U.S. citizen joins a foreign army does not constitute renunciation of U.S. citizenship, at least when, as was the case at bar, such foreign army was not waging war against the United States. The Afroyim Case requires that for a U.S. citizen to renounce his citizenship the decision be voluntary and unequivocal, a standard that would not be met merely by deciding to live in a newly independent Puerto Rico (anymore than one loses one’s U.S. citizenship if one moves to Canada or even North Korea).
Besides, even if the Filipino precedent was deemed applicable, it would be foolhardy for Congress to legislate such a rule, because, were that the case, the lion’s share of Puerto Rico’s 3.5 million U.S. citizens would move to the U.S. mainland, at least until it is safe to return to Puerto Rico without losing their citizenship. I don’t think that such mass migration would be in anyone’s interest (except for people that own moving companies).
Due to such legal and practical restrictions, I think that the furthest that Congress to go regarding U.S. citizenship following independence for Puerto Rico is (i) repeal the section of the Nationality Act of 1940 that provides that all persons born or naturalized in Puerto Rico, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States (which repeal should be a no-brainer once Puerto Rico no longer is part of the United States) and (ii) amend the section of the Act that grants birthright citizenship to persons born abroad to one or two U.S.-citizen parents when at least one of the U.S.-citizen parent previously had lived in the U.S. for a certain time period in order to clarify that residence in Puerto Rico (post-independence or, perhaps, pre-independence as well) shall no longer be deemed residence in the United States for such purposes. But even with such rules in place it is likely that, except for children of immigrants, most children born in Puerto Rico post-independence will continue to be U.S. citizens at birth.
Of course, this entire exercise is academic, since very few residents of Puerto Rico want the island to be independent; it is among the Puerto Rican “diaspora” in New York and Chicago that a non-insignificant percentage of second- or third-generation “Newyorricans” (but not the smart ones) long for independence for their “little island,” although I notice that all of them stay safely in the United States and fight for the right to vote for president and for U.S. Senators and Representatives for everyone—except residents of Puerto Rico, that is. They are the equivalent of Irish-Americans opposed to the Republic of Ireland becoming an economic power because they prefer “the old country” to stay green and poor for their occasional visits (I don’t know any Irish-Americans like that, but I’m sure that some exist). Independence is favored by less than 5% of residents of Puerto Rico (or of Puerto Ricans in Central Florida, for that matter).
The only reason why statehood hasn’t gotten 90% of the vote in Puerto Rico is because almost half of the electorate is willing to trade away full rights of citizenship and the political dignity afforded by U.S. statehood (including the election of the Congress that legislates over them and of the president that can send them and/or their children into battle) for a half-serving of citizenship rights but without having to pay federal income taxes. Such persons also do not believe that they have to [defecate] or get off the pot, and they see no risk in opposing statehood while independence is not seen as a realistic threat. Moreover, far too many of them pointedly say that they won’t support statehood because “Congress won’t give it to us, so what’s the use?”, a clear example of a self-fulfilling prophesy if there ever was one.
My prediction is that if Congress ordered a plebiscite between statehood and independence, and made clear that “Commonwealth status” would cease to exist and that it would grant independence unilaterally unless a majority chose statehood, the only persons to vote against statehood would be the handfull of “independentistas” and a few hecklers safe in knowing that the polls would show a huge victiry for statehood. And, even if independence was not a threat, were Congress to aporove an enabling act setting forth the rights and responsibilities of Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state, and put it up for a vote in Puerto Rico, statehood would win in a landslide.
As for how residents of Puerto Rico would vote if it were a state, that’s impossible to know for sure, since very few voters in Puerto Rico hve given more than perfunctory thought to the national political parties and what they stand for. I do know that the mayors of 6 of the 9 largest cities are Republicans (San Juan had a Republican mayor until Jorge Santini lost in 2012), including a rare member of the pro-”Commonwealth” Popular Democratic Party that admits to be a national Republican (something that generally is taboo among “Populares” because for most of the 20th century “Republicano” was a synonym for “statehooder,” and sone old folks still use that term). A majority of members of both houses if the state legislature are Republicans as well, including the Senate president and the House Speaker. And voters in Puerto Rico tend to be socially conservative but economically populist. So I don’t think that Puerto Rico would be a heavily Democrat state, despite the wishes of Ruy Texeira and his “ascendant majority.”
I’m sorry but your history is off. The US Congress passed a law in 1934 (the Tydings-McDuffie Act, aka the Philippine Independence Act), a dozen years before Philippine Independence, that restricted Filipino immigration to the US to 50 people per year. The act reclassified all Filipinos as “aliens” even though the Philippines remained a US colony for many years. Needless to say, Filipinos continued legally to be “aliens” after their independence too and did not carry US citizenship.
This was followed the next year by the Filipino Repatriation Act of 1935, where the US paid for the free repatriation of Filipinos and halted all family reunification from the Philippines for those Filipinos who decided to stay in the US. That law was replaced by the Nationality Act of 1940, which continued strict restrictions on Filipino immigration to the US. After Philippine independence, however, the US government did offer US citizenship to members of the Philippine Scouts who had fought on behalf of the US during WWII, but that hardly applied to all Filipinos.
The Panama Canal Zone was of course not a separate nation and never received it’s independence. It was a thin strip of land that became part of the country of Panama. Panamaians in general did not carry US citizenship. Those citizenship laws were overwhelmingly for US servicemen and workers.
Unlike the 14th Amendment that applies to those born in the United States and talks explicitly about “states” (not territories, much less foreign nations), Congress makes the rules for citizenship of those born outside of the US. You’re right about the laws as they stand now, but Congress can always change those laws, which would almost certainly happen in the case of Puerto Rican independence. (Yes, there would be court challenges, but that’s a different issue...)
Until the Act of October 10, 1978, persons who had acquired U.S. citizenship through birth outside of the United States to one U.S. citizen parent had to meet certain physical presence requirements to retain their citizenship. This legislation eliminated retention requirements for persons who were born after October 10, 1952. There may be cases where a person who was born before that date, and therefore subject to the retention requirements, may have failed to retain citizenship. [4]
Without ending the citizenship of current bona-fide citizens it is possible to, once again, change these laws to tighten them up.We are being gamed, that's for sure. For instance, I have a friend who lives in Israel and has for 40 years after immigrating there. Not only does she retain her citizenship, but so do all of her kids, who have all dutifully served in the Israeli Army and also vote in Israel elections, and most of whom have never set foot in the USA. The idea that *their* kids will also be super-dual citizens like this is ridiculous.
Sure. Except not all of us are NeoConservatives who hold to the Proposition Nation theory of the Club for Growth. The idea that, for instance, Mexicans are "natural conservatives" has been a key talking point of all the Cuckservative losers from McCain to Jeb "they have better families than us" Bush, and it was more-or-less explicitly rejected by the GOP Majority when we selected Donald "they all have to go" Trump as our nominee.
So, no, we don't logically have to welcome Puerto Ricans as part of America. And in fact the process of disentagling ourselves would be a good one.
For example, a child born outside the USA (such as in the former Canal Zone) to a US citizen mother is not a citizen unless the mother resided in the USA for a certain amount of time prior to the birth. There are different requirements depending upon whether citizenship is derived from the mother, the father or both parents. Over time, as a territory is no longer part of the USA, the chances are high that even US citizen parents will not meet these requirements such that their children will not be citizens.
Which sounds vaguely reassuring, but then, in the next post you linked the actual page from the USCIS which shows clearly that:
Think about the 1 million Chinese anchor babies whose moms came on the "have baby in USA and get him citizenship" travel plan. All their kids will be US Citizens.
Thanks for a very interesting and fact-filled posting. I think the example of the USA disentangling from the Philippines is one that should be studied WRT Puerto Rico, for what we (non Puerto Rican Americans interested in maintaining the traditional America) should be working to flesh out as a plan.
The anchor baby issue has to do with babies born in the USA, who are citizens regardless of whether their parents are citizens. (Which of course is completely wrong!)
This thread was about babies born outside of the USA in former territories once they are no longer part of the USA. In that case, they would be citizens only if the parental presence in the US requirement was met. Which it would be easily in the years right after a separation (because the parents would have lived in P.R. while it was part of the US). But at a certain point, over time, fewer and fewer Puerto Rican parents would have lived in the US prior to giving birth, and those kids would not be citizens. I don’t like this or suggest it is ok - I would much prefer far more strict citizenship requirements.
I think those residency requirements were all ended in the 1984 rewrite of the immigration laws. I believe US Citizenship is inheritable regardless of location or residence history of either the gifting parent or child-citizen.
US Gov: Citizenship through Parents
I think, upon closer reading there are still some residency requirements, though it's pretty confusingly presented.
They wouldn’t want to be included, since as a heavily black political entity, they’d be giving all that power away and would be only a small fraction of PR’s population (3.5 million vs. 100k).
UNITED STATES :
Citizenship is based upon Title 8 of U.S. Code 1401 - 1409, dated 1986.
BY BIRTH:
Child born within the territory of the United States, regardless of the citizenship of the parents.
BY DESCENT:
Child born abroad, both of whose parents are citizens of the United States, and one of whom resided in the United States before the birth of the child.
Child born abroad, one of whose parents is a citizen of the United States who resided in the United States for at least five years before the birth of the child
http://www.multiplecitizenship.com/documents/IS-01.pdf
After the date of Puerto Rican independence, children born in Puerto Rico would be born outside of the USA so the above requirements would apply. For a period of many years, these requirements would be satisfied for almost every child born in Puerto Rico. But when reached the point where the parents themselves were born after P.R. independence and neither of them has lived in the USA (not including P.R.) prior to the birth, then the resulting children will not be US citizens.
Who’s the PDP Mayor that’s a Republican?
José Guillermo “Guillito” Rodríguez, Mayor of Mayagüez. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Guillermo_Rodr%C3%ADguez
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