Suppose the island territory of Puerto Rico was granted independance…what would happen to all the formerly US Citizen Puerto Ricans living in the Continental USA?
Would they suddenly become resident aliens and need to register with the INS
Suppose the island territory of Puerto Rico was granted independance…what would happen to all the formerly US Citizen Puerto Ricans living in the Continental USA?
Would they suddenly become resident aliens and need to register with the INS
That probably would depend on how Puerto Rico was granted independance and the provisions of the agreement.
I’ve never seen a proposal for PR independence that didn’t include a proviso that American citizenship would be retained for those who held it at the time of independence. AFAICR the only questions were: would there be a proviso for dual citizenship, would post-independence Puerto Ricans be able to pass on their US citizenship to their own (non-US born) children, etc.
er … “would there be a proviso for dual citizenship for future Puerto Ricans” …
What happened to the Filipinos? I believe they were citizens. (maybe not)
The US has had some experience with this before. It was done on a case by case basis.
The US annexed Hawaii and granted citizenship to the residents, although no one thought it would ever become a state at the time (1898) because the majority of the residents were … you know … NOT WHITE. However, we know how that ended up.
The Philippines was a much different issue because when the U.S. acquired the Philippines from Spain (with the help of a few battleships), the U.S. still had to deal with a widescale insurrection. I believe that Filipinos living in the Philippines were not granted citizenship, but when the U.S. gave the Philippines its independence in 1946, Filipinos living in the US were granted citizenship as were Filipino soldiers who were fighting for the U.S.