So it looks like Statehood for PR is going to win, but Congress must approve for this to actually go through.
Do you think that Congress and Obama will get on this right away, or do you think there will be heel dragging for a while?
What do you think of the result? Good or bad for PR or the US?
Good for PR and the U.S. – but, N.B., it will involve a redefinition of what it means to be “American,” because PR is a Spanish-speaking, Latin-Catholic island and will remain so forever, regardless of its political status. If PR becomes a state, “language rights” will now become a relevant political issue in the U.S. in much the same way it has always been a relevant issue in Canada and for the same reasons (Quebec will always be a French-speaking province).
I don’t think that the current House of Representatives is going to be very interested in this idea since it would cost Texas and Florida each a congressperson (it would also cost California, Washington and Minnesota one each). I think they also wouldn’t be too keen on adding two potentially Democratic senators. No idea on who the island would actually send to Congress, though, since their politics doesn’t necessarily track the rest of the states’.
At the same time, both parties have made noises in the not-to-distant past about encouraging Puerto Rico to decide on statehood, so maybe they’ll actually jump on this.
They could simply amend the law to change the number of Representatives and raise it to 440. It’s a matter of statute, not a Constitutional limit.
This is really going to fuck up our flag.
Deleted duplicate post.
I don’t think they would want to go with an even number.
On a side note, I know the procedure for tie-break votes in the Senate, but how do they break ties in the House? Does a tie just mean the bill/proposal fails?
Why do I have the feeling that one of the first things a Puerto Rican Congressman (i.e. one representing Puerto Rico) would do is to introduce a bill (a) authorizing a specific set of Spanish-language lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner”, and (b) making both the English and Spanish language versions equally valid as the National Anthem?
I don’t know. Why do you have that feeling?
Holy Shit, really? I would have never bet.
OK, the issue here is that the President would abide ‘by a clear majority’ which this really wasn’t. But he’d like to bring them on board. The senate will play ball, but who the hell wouldn’t like (in Harry Reid’s opinion) two more D Senators? But the House, for the exact same reason, is going to block it at every opportunity. Hopefully it will force up latino voting even further next time.
As for the issues of spanish-speaking and catholic-based? Those are all easily handled. And the issue of Spanish is one the United States is damn well going to have to confront soon as we’re trending towards a bilingual country.
And we have loads of options for the flag.
Honestly, I want this to happen just because it would be awesome to say I was alive when it did. I always thought the era of adding states was over.
Follow up question: why would any of those things matter? The National Anthem doesn’t have any legalistic magic powers that I’m aware of, and I am pretty sure Spanish speakers have figured out a way to translate the words from English to Spanish without Congress getting involved.
They sure could. As far as I know, though, the Reapportionment Act of 1929 is still in effect, which would mean that there would be a temporary increase in the number of Congresspersons until the 2020 Census, at which point the number of seats would revert back to 435 (this is what happened when Alaska and Hawaii were admitted). But Congress is perfectly capable of changing that along with the admission act if they are so inclined.
Either way, Nate Silver will have to change his domain name.
Even so, I think the flag has reached saturation-point on stars. One more state, and we should drop the one-star-per-state tradition and go back to the original ring of 13 stars. 13 stars, 13 stripes. Lucky number for America, always has been.
Hm. Well, why not?
It just occurred to me: Puerto Rico now has observer status in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). If PR were a state of the Union, then the U.S. – not PR, but the whole U.S., which now happens to include a major Caribbean island – could apply to join CARICOM as a full member. If we wanted to. Which would be a head-exploder, because I get the impression it’s one of those organizations that was put together as, among other things, an intended counterweight to the mighty U.S.
Oh good. Crisis averted. Welcome aboard, Puerto Ricans!
Does PR have a standing invitation from the US to become a state?
Nope, for PR to become a state would take act of Congress. The US government has never offered statehood to Puerto Rico. There was a project (Tydings) of offering independence once, but IIRC the conditions were not nice, as it included stiff tariffs and would have created harsher economic environment than what the island had at that moment (in the middle of the Great Depression).
You know Republicans in the House will fight this…but how? Where do they hang their hats to deny PR statehood? How can they do it without further alienating Hispanic voters?
