They aren't Americans, they're Puerto Ricans, just ask them.
To answer your question however, by giving them their independance and letting them fend for themselves. Puerto Rico is a money pit and it's time to stop writing it blank checks.
It became worthless to us when they demanded we close the live fire training site for the Navy.
Fellow Biker (I own a H-D Sporty 1200):
When you say "they" you are including me. My passport says I am an American. My retired military I.D. says I am an American. My dad buried at a National Cemetery says I am an American.
Another Freeper mentioned once in one of these PR threads that when Lee was talking about his "country" and his "countrymen" he was talking about Virginia and Virginians. Puerto Ricans follow the same traditions, where my country is the physical space where we live and our nation is the a federalist United States of America.
Please see my profile and read the preamble to the PR Constitution.
See you on the road,
cll
"It became worthless to us when they demanded we close the live fire training site for the Navy."
So, a tiny piece of land that was used as an impact area is worth more than over two hundred thousand veterans, dead and alive, for example?
Most are fiercely proud Americans. Their blood has been spilled along side their mainland brothers in Afganistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, the Pacific, Europe.....
yeah, and we have Texans and Carolinians, New Englanders ... the list can go on and on.
Here. Is. The. Newsflash...
R u ready???...
Boricuas are AMERICAN.
True, Puerto Rico holds a unique position; citizenship in our Nation comes from an act of Congress, and thus has applied to any American born on the island. Is that citizenship somehow different from you & I (you ARE a native-American, I assume???) who were born here?
You may believe so, I don't. In fact, your distinction based on geographic origin is just the good old socialist "let's define 'em by what makes 'em different" group model.
Hyphenated Americanism doesn't work, dude! Haven't you ever read what Teddy Roosevelt said about this same thing 100 years ago?
CGVet58
(USCG, 1976-2000, full-blooded AMERICANO con raizes de Acero Boricua)