Puerto Rico, the 51st state

Factual Questions
1

If Puerto Rico held a vote, and wanted to become the 51st state, would the feds let them?

Do they want to become a state? Do they want independence? Or are they happy with “commonwealth” status?

FWIW, it almost seems like a “sweetheart deal” right now with full protections of a US citizen but no federal income tax and no voting for prez.

I harbor no ill will toward Puerto Ricans and I’m not really trying to start a debate, but if it turns that way, so be it. I’m just looking for facts and polls, for the most part.

edit: Guam, the Virgin Islands or other protectorates are also welcome in the discussion.

(This post has been edited by Eleusis on Apr 23 2004, 03:16 AM)

“I’m not a mod, and we still can’t edit. That was a joke” - Eleusis

2

It is a sweetheart deal, but nobody feels a need to modify Puerto Rico’s status. Straddling the fence seems to satisfy the natives, and since the US government probably can’t find the island on a map, everything works out.

3

IIRC, the Republicans enacted a vote on statehood every ten or so years from now to the end of time. If the population wants to become a state, it seems reasonable that Congress would accept.

But as long as the sweetheart deal of Commonwealth is on offer, it seems most unlikely that the residents would opt for statehood.

OTOH, the smaller Commonwealths are probably seen as too small to deserve two senators.

4

Puerto Rico has a referrendum every few years, and as I recall the results are usually about 50/50 split between statehood and commonwealth, with a small minority pushing for full independence. I am fairly certain Congress would be happy to admit PR as a state.

I don’t think Puerto Rico’s commonwealth status is such a sweetheart deal; they do not pay federal taxes, but they also do not get many federal services. To make up for that, thier local taxes are pretty similar to what people on the mainland pay anyway. And they probably would not get the distinction of having a live naval bombing range if they had clout in Congress.

5

Like the states of Utah, California, South Dakota, Missouri, Wisconsin, Texas, and Florida (from a quick Google)?

The real opponents of the bombing range were property developers who could not stand to see uninhabited, undeveloped high-value land. Oddly (and obviously when you think about it) bombing ranges are good for the environment. Nobody goes there too much, no hunting, no roads.

Of course the occasional ground squirrel gets atomized, but few get bulldozed.

The Puerto Ricans were not asked to carry a heavy burden by having a bombing range. We can only hope the property developers are not condemning our sailors to an early grave.

“Of course that is just my opinion, I could be wrong.”

6

I just got back from PR last week. I got the impression that the people really enjoyed the perks of being a territory. I could not ever see them trying to obtain their independence. They have too much of a good thing going. BTW, GREAT place to vacation.

7

No, sorry, never made it into law. Got passed by 1 vote in the House, was allowed to die quietly in Senate committee.

Search “Puerto Rico statehood commonwealth referendum” (if nobody actually addresses my name in the reply texts, does the keyword search show that I had a post in the thread? 'cos I’ve written about this a lot in earlier threads) for several earlier threads about this. Including a very recent one in which I wrote about whether there would be any obligation to admit us if there’s ever any real, binding vote on the issue. Search “good faith offer statehood Puerto Rico”.

The thing is, holding that vote and abiding by it are political decisions. The Congress would have to act politically and evaluate the consequences of their actions politically. Questions such as:
[ul]Is Statehood a right that any organized, geographically defined, viable population of US citizens can claim?
-What terms and conditions to “qualify” do we want to impose? Which from history no longer apply, which should now be added?
-What transitional provisions are we willing to provide?
-How do we make it so those terms and provisions neither “poison the pill” nor look like pie-in-the-sky?
-What do we offer as the alternative to statehood? More of the same? Minor adjustments? “Goodbye and good riddance”?
-Do we even have to offer an alternative?
-Even if we don’t explicitly offer an alternative, what do we DO if statehood fails? Tell them to shut up, they had their chance?
-Do we risk that a failure of statehood to arrive in timely fashion trigger a move of at least half a million US-loyalist PRicans into the mainland? With the consequent dip in business and property values in the island meaning there would be a spike in the need for more US funds?
-Do we risk that granting statehood trigger the ire of those who voted against it, meaning those who voted against would be continuously striking, giving money to defeat our reelection, etc., and the 0.5% fanatical fringe will start more drastic actions?
-How large a majority should be required? How do we know it wasn’t just a statistical fluke?
-Statehood means parity in taxation, but also parity in entitlements. Is it legitimate to even consider this balance line a factor?
-How will the acceptance of a state that doesn’t just have a Hispanic history and tradition but IS primarily Spanish-speaking and culturally Latin American, play with our constituents?
-Conversely, have we any legal right to require any degree of assimilation?
-How will that affect what other ethnic/national groups can claim?
-Should we care what the stateside PRican-community leaders (who tend to pay lip service to nationalism and identity-politics) have to say about it? What if the near-million PRican voters in NY demand that they should also have a say in the issue?
-Do we keep 435 House seats, and thus in the next census have to strip 6 seats and electoral votes off other states, or do we enlarge the House?[/ul]
etc. Congress is not known as the Home of the Brave.
The only legally-binding-on-both-partners vote on the US/PR relationship was a straight-up “Commonwealth, yes or no” vote in 1952. No process to establish a legally-binding-on-both-partners multiple-choice vote has ever made it past both Houses of Congress. The latest attempts (1989-91, sponsored by Bennet Johnston; and 1995-98, sponsored by Don Young) met the same fate: strangulation in committee.

The local plebiscites, in 1967, 93 and 98, were essentially attempts by the respective PRican administration-at-the-time to earn a “mandate” for seeking their particular status alternative. None were effective in accomplishing anything. The '93 and '98 referenda showed support for Statehood holding steady at 46.5%. In '93, continued-or-improved commonwealth had 48.5% (*more on this later) and outright independence 4.5%. The 98 referendum became a political protest vote, with 51% voting “none of the above” because they were pissed off at the guv, but the polls reflect the 93 distribution is holding steady.

(*more on this) Part of the “sweetheartness” in the commonwealth is that you can always hold out the promise that you’ll tweak it to either resemble statehood more, or resemble sovereignty more, without endangering your pet likeable thing about it. In strictly practical terms, everyday life in PR is already highly US-ified, except ít’s all in Spanish.

jrd

BTW re: Vieques. In Vieques… nothing’s happenning. The local folk, after having their hopes and legitimate concerns used by economic and political interests to move out the range, have not received any of the promised peace dividend. Well, there is one thing that’s turning up in the Vieques economy: property values and rents are going up, up, up. Right up out of the reach of the actual longtime resident working-class population. Bravo, Mr. Sharpton :rolleyes: Meanwhile, half the land can’t really be redeveloped – most of that became a wildlife refuge, and a smaller part (the actual range), well, everyone’s waiting to see which government gets to remove the UXO and other contaminants. And the town of Ceiba in PR itself, where the actual Naval Base that used the Vieques range was, got solidly kicked in the nuts as an unintended consequence.

8

Sadly, most of the people who were pushing for Vieques to be taken off as a bombing range had absolutely no clue what they were talking about, and using the most dishonest statistics I’ve ever heard of to “prove” their point.

Why would the land values skyrocket? I mean, why would anyone want to go live there now? I thought the bombing was miles and miles away from town and didn’t really make noise. So who is buying up the land?

9

Land speculators. As I said, more than half of the former Navy lands, meaning a bit less than half the island, will be a Wildlife Refuge/National Park type setup – one with excellent beaches that already are accessible to the public over trails. So the part of Vieques that is outside the reserve becomes prime for potential future developments – and though to outsider land speculators it’s still cheap, to the ordinary Viequense it’s beyond what he can afford.

10

Lex Luthor. Better hope Superman can turn back time when he creates a disaster to make his land more valuable.

11

JRDelirious, muchas gracias for your posts! I lost track of the referenda a while ago, they were happening when I was a kid, although I do remember '98.

I take it when people from Puerto Rico move to the mainland and register to vote at their new address, they can then vote for President? Are there any Presdential campaign ads shown down there, hoping that people will call their relatives in the States and talk about them?

12

This is just me talking - I dated a PR girl for 6 six years, went to PR about a dozen times and learned all about PR politics in that time - but my gut feelings (along with simple math) tell me that as long as those plebicites have three options, nothing concrete will ever be done. If the choice was “statehood or independence”, then PR would vote to become a state (or I’m assuming it would, as statehood usually only needs 2 or 3 percentage points to be a majority).

Although PR-icans are fiercely protective of their culture, they’ve got too much time and blood invest to “leave” the US. Plus, half of Puerto Rico lives in New York, so… :smiley:

13

Absolutely. Thank me for Bill Clinton :wink:

Nope. I think it’s against FEC rules to advertise in a market that does not actually hit eligible voters. In '00 a lot of people did visit to hitch a ride on the whole Vieques fiasco, but that was media opportunities, rather than advertising.

We CAN have Presidential primaries but very often (a) it’s already a cinch by the time we’re due and/or (b) it’s hijacked by a contest between local factions (since the GOP and Dems do NOT actually run the local elections, we use homegrown parties for that), so the candidate/US party doesn’t bother with it. Party Chairmen McCauliffe and Nichols do show up periodically to hit us for money, anyway, whether or not we participate.

What DOES happen, a lot, is that PRican politicos will go to the stateside communities and campaign for their preferred US candidate. Less kosherly, ocassionally the local governing party will ally itself with a stateside candidate and try to apply a (discreet) slant to the “voter registration education” campaigns we aim at the stateside community (NY Congresswoman Velazquez is suspected to have benefitted from this strategy - she was in charge of that program just before announcing her own run!). Amazingly, what is more common is that many PRicans who move stateside stay registered in PR and ask for absentee ballots year after year or even take two days off to fly over to vote in the PR election. shakes head

14

Oh, right:

Well, as to viability of statehood for the others, there’s the small detail that PR alone is 7/8 of the inhabited landmass, population and economy of the US overseas “empire”, the largest other Unincorporated Territory barely makes it to one fifth the population of the least populous state. Admitting one of the outliers would make for disproportional representation not only in the Senate but in the House – though nothing in the Law mandates it, it’s politically unlikely to admit a jurisdiction that doesn’t at least get close to the 600K+ citizens an “average” a Congressional District now stands for.

Then again the only US nonstate actively seeking statehood is DC.

Guam voted resoundingly to move from plain territory to Commonwealth (meaning, get a home-drafted Constitution rather than an Act of Congress to organize their internal governeance, and renegotiate the “relations act” for greater autonomy) in the late 80s. However at the relevant committees in Cap Hill they have been repeatedly told “no dice” at what level of autonomy they want for their Commonwealth, so it seems that mandate may eventually have to be re-proposed.

The USVI held a PR-style local-mandate referendum in 93 or 94. In their case they had a really, really multiple choice vote: No Change, PR-style Commonwealth, Free Association, Incorporated Territory, Statehood, Independence, Other. IIRC “No Change” got a plurality something in the 20-percentiles, with everything else tanking badly (In the case of the USVI, they have a Free Port status inherited from when the US got them from Denmark in 1917, and many would rather not tinker with that)

The Northern Marianas got their Commonwealth in 1978, on more favorable terms than PR in some aspects – but they have been having some difficulties with how they exempted themselves from some labor and migration laws, and Congress has made the appropriate noises about just who is the ultimate authority.

American Samoa is a special case – its inhabitants are not full citizens, and it’s not ruled under an Organic Act of Congress, but under special laws allowing the Secretary of the Interior to set up governments and courts there.

The Free Associates – Palau, the Marshalls and the Federated States of Micronesia – never were US territory legally, and now have all been recognized by the UN as independent Republics who happen to outsource their defense, posts, monetary policy and consular affairs to the USA.

15

…time began…two new (Democratic/Demogogic) senators, and 4-5 new reps as well! Surely a way to take back the Congress from those evil republicans!
However, this will NEVER happen! And the reason will surprise you! It is not the people of Puerto Rico–it is their corrupt local politicians. Puerto Rico’s public schools are paid for by the Fedral Government…and the money from Washington goes into a black hole of graft and corruption. Statehood would expose the school dept. to intensive auditing…which the politicians do not want! The per-pulip school expenditure in Puerto Rico isabout $11,000/year…and much of this money is stolen.
The local crooks don’t want the gravy train upset, so don’t hold your breath about staehood! :cool: