There’s a process for admitting states to the union. I don’t know all the steps. One such step would be for Congress to pass a bill admitting states. As I recall from the admittance of Alaska and Hawaii, those places had to vote in referendums, and write a state constitution, and some other things had to happen, before statehood was considered in Washington by the Congress.
Has any of this happened in Puerto Rico? I know they have had referendums but didn’t think there was ever any overwhelming vote for statehood.
Washington, DC has had a referendum and written a state constitution. It also contributes around 4 times as much tax money to the feds than it gets back in appropriations. In addition all the other capital cities of the world give full citizenship rights to their citizens. All the embassies in DC must look at this and think “what hypocrites these Americans are.” DC now has more population than Wyoming and Vermont. So why all this fuss about PR statehood when DC has done so much more to achieve it?