What's the most likely candidate for 51st state of America?

i already memorized the State Song:
I’m a yooper
You’re a yooper
We’re a yooper all.
When we get together
We do the yooper call!
YOOPYOOPYOOPYOOPYOOPYOOPYOOPYOOPYOOPYOOPYOOP

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It would be (10 miles)[sup]2[/sup] or “10 miles squared” viz. a square of side length 10 miles. 10 miles[sup]2[/sup] is 10 square miles which could be any shape but in the shape of a square, the sides would be just over 3 miles long.
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I can’t see Congress voting to allow a new state which would be by some distance the most populous, and by US standards very left-leaning. The Republicans might never see a Presidency ever again. To be honest, I’m not sure that the cultural background is all that similar any more either.

Rather than adding states to the U.S., shouldn’t they be letting some become part of Canada? Alaska, Maine, Vermont. They’re pretty much halfway there, anyway. So clean and full of quasi-hippies…

I once saw a pamphlet advocating the formation of a new state of “Cumberland” out of nine counties in western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia.

And you could give Texas back Mexico, and no one would miss it.

That reminds of a thread I saw over two years ago.

I don’t see the U.S. adding any new states for awhile. The D.C. representational problem can be solved by just granting it voting rights without changing its unique status or having to redraw its borders.

I’m not sure if you’re joking here but I’ll give it a shot. The chances of the United Kingdom (of which England is a part) deciding to enter explicit political union with the United States seems unlikely to me. Although many people in the UK are I suppose anti-EU, below the upper echelons of government I doubt they’re much more pro-USA. Although they are swamped with the cultural products of the USA they still cling onto their regional and national identities. There’s also the monarchy to be sorted out. There’s the distance from the “mainland” USA (although I’m not sure whether Hawaii is further from the contiguous 48 than Britain is). Could Britain benefit from such a union? The United Kingdom is already rich by world standards. Perhaps when the United Kingdom dissolves, Scotland or Wales or Cornwall or Yorkshire might nail their colours to the American mast.

Looking it up on wiki.answers. com, I see that New York to London is 3458 miles, while Los Angeles to Honolulu is 2560 miles.

The important question about the situation of DC ceding the parts of the city that aren’t directly involved in the federal government is, does Maryland WANT to take on what is mostly a poverty-stricken population in some very high-crime neighborhoods?

Right. The answer has to be Puerto Rico, as they are the only dudes that can vote themselves in.

As for Texas, they’d still need the Permission of Congress to split. Now, the deal allowing them to potentially split into five states is still somewhat valid, but all it is is “Legislative Intent”, which could sway a vote or two, but doesn’t force Congress to allow Texas to split. So, although Snopes is technically right that such a clause exists, the clause doesn’t over-rule the Constitution.

I’ve heard of a semi-serious plan for Canada to take on one of the Anglophone island territories in the Caribbean as a new Province; Bermuda perhaps? Somewhere like that, anyway.

Nope, you’re all wrong: Lawsuit seeks to declare Taiwan residents as U.S. “nationals”

Do you think China would mind?

Haven’t you heard?

Iraq.

That is the current exit strategy.

Make Iraq the 51st state and we never have to leave.

It’s Turks and Caicos Islands. Cite.

Note that the idea has been proposed, but the legal and political problems of admitting these islands to the Canadian Confederation seem difficult. Admission of the islands as a province would require a constitutional amendment which nobody seems to want to do; admission as a territory might be a little easier, since that only requires a federal law; Nova Scotia has offered to allow the islands to join it (so they wouldn’t be admitted as a province but as part of an existing province, which could make things easier still), but no headway has been made on any of these ideas.

Believe it or not, there is a minor political party called the Expansionist Party of the United States, dedicating to annexing any territory which can be fit into the American polity by any conceivable argument, culminating eventually in a world union. It has pages on Canada, the UK, the Philippines, etc.

Hey buddy, it’s the United STATES of America, not the People’s Republic of America. The entire system of government is based on semi-sovereign states under a federal government. DC isn’t a state, therefore no Senators or Representatives.

Giving DC representation like a state would negate the Connecticut Compromise, and screw things up.

Sucks, but if you don’t like it, move to a state!

:confused: How?

Great. Just what we need is to give a bunch of coal miners, shepherds, and pirates* the right of unlimited travel and settlement here. Right now we have the INS to keep the riff-raff out, but then they’d be part of the voting public, though they can’t even read the ballots. And with Mexicans we can demand they speak English but people in the UK claim they already do, though you wouldn’t know from listening to them. Didn’t we learn our lesson when we let in all those Irish in the 19th century? :wink:

They may not even have to wait until the UK dissolves. Quoting a fictional Lord Mayor of Cardiff, and paraphrasing probably every politician more than 50km from London, “We’re in Cardiff. London doesn’t care. The South Wales Coast could fall into the sea and they wouldn’t notice.”

    • Yes, everything I know about those places I learned from How Green was my Valley, Lassie Come Home, All Creatures Great and Small, and The Pirates of Penzance. How’d you know?

Hey, none of those is set in Scotland! I’d recommend Brigadoon. :stuck_out_tongue: