If you are not very familiar with the issues involved - meaning, if your knee-jerk reaction to the prospect of statehood for the territories is "Are you crazy?! Four million new Democrats?! Get rid of them!" - then you really need to read the entire article.
Don’t need any more guaranteed Democrat welfare states, sorry.
Actually, I stopped reading right here. I don't feel like getting any more mind-screwed today.
The question and problem is simple. Either the majority of the citizens are willing to accept the duties of statehood (i.e., PERSONAL FEDERAL INCOME TAXES) or they are not. Further, either they make a good enough case to meet the requirement that other states accept it into their union or they do not.
It isn't just a case of getting two more Democrat Senators and a couple how many Representatives because you complain about this or that. Prove your case and satisfy everyone according to the established rules or SHUT UP.
Just what we need.
Two more demonRAT senators, two more demonRAT congressmen, and two more demonRAT presidential electors.
Puerto Rico has every right to petition to be a state. I don’t think anyone can really deny that.
On the lighter side, I’d like to see England, Wales, and Scotland also apply for statehood.
Might as well.
NO PR NEVER gets statehood ever. Let’s cut them loose so they can be their own country. We don’t need another 2 Democrat Senators and three Democrat Congressmen forever.
Statehood gets voted down in referendums.
The US has the following inhabited territories:
US Virgin Islands
Puerto Rico
Guam
American Samoa
North Mariana Islands
I don’t see any continuing interests for the US in either the US Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico. Time to spin them off as independent. Other Caribbean Islands exist just fine as independent islands.
Cut it free.
We already have too many dysfunctional states and cities.
We don’t need another “taker” state, and there’s no way they’ll be a contributor state. Cut ‘em loose.
Whatever path it is on, do not repeat DO NOT let it become a State of the United States! It can become a county or two of Florida FULL STOP.
Any amendment to the US Constitution requires 3/4’s of states to ratify. Talk of statehood for DC and PR puts needed amendments in limbo and puts dangerous amendments into play.
They like are jobs.
One word.
English.
Must be official language.
You are correct. The Insular Case were repugnant to the Constitution. Nothing in the Constitution allows the Congress to treat territories aquired by treaty as if they are not fully US Territory.
The precedent set by the Louisiana Purchase is that Territories acquired by treaty become fully part of the United States. The same applied to the Purchase of Florida, The the Division of the Oregon Country, The Annexation Treaty with the Republic of Texas. The territories acquired after the War with Mexico, the Alaska Purchase, and the Annexation of the Republic of Hawaii.
Only the territory acquired after the War with Spain and the treaty dividing Samoa between the US and the German Empire were classed as “unincorporated”.
That category had never existed before.
The Constitution does not grant the Congress the authority to pick and choose where the Constitution applies. It applies to the United States and all territories under it’s jurisdiction.
As we did with another relic of the Spanish-American War, the Philippines, we should have cut P/R loose in 1945 to independence.
Why are you so freaking obsessed with Puerto Rican statehood! Does what America wants matter at all? We don’t need to add a foreign territory to a union that is so perilously close to caving from within. We don’t want another impoverished, culturally foreign, non-English state voting for socialist Democrats. Done! Shut up already! :s