7 ms·
Statehood for all territories.
by bluetwo 9y ago
Statehood for all territories.
- jonathanyc 9y agoWhat about those that don’t want statehood, like Puerto Rico? I think we should offer automatic citizenship and cheap transportation for all citizens of US territories to the mainland, though.
- banned1 9y ago"I think we should offer ... cheap transportation" How many tickets do you want to purchase? I am collecting donations. Unless you are just talking...
- kolpa 9y agoUncle Sam does a fine job collecting donations.
- tartuffe78 9y agoTaxes aren't donated, they're collected.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> What about those that don’t want statehood, like Puerto Rico? Statehood won the last two status referenda in Puerto Rico.
- tptacek 9y agoThe last time with just 25% turnout --- lower than the Illinois midterms --- in part due to a boycott of the referendum by anti-statehood groups. The preceding 3 referendums voted against statehood.
- bobthepanda 9y agoAnd the political landscape has probably changed post-Maria. Not being a state has really hampered PR's efforts to get aid.
- xboxnolifes 9y agoIf so many people didn't want statehood, they probably should have voted in the referendum...
- tptacek 9y agoIt's a non-binding referendum, and Puerto Ricans have been debating the wording of these polls for over a decade. Neither side can pretend that there's a clear public will in either direction --- especially since public support for statehood sometimes carries some unrealistic predicates (continued support for a Spanish official language and the continuation of the PR legal system, which is something like half-ours and half-theirs). I'm a Democrat and would like to see PR a state, but it's not honest to pretend that this is a cut-and-dried decision. There are benefits to the limbo PR is in right now: US citizenship without income tax and much more control over the operation of their territory than they'd have as a state.
- jcranmer 9y agoThere are three camps: statehood, independence, and status quo. Over time, statehood has captured more and more of the vote, and probably constitutes a plurality of the vote at this time (maybe a majority, I don't know), followed somewhat closely by status quo and very distantly by independence. The operative word is probably: the most recent referendums were designed to provoke the statehood option, leading to the results being ignored as not providing a clear mandate. Constant relitigation of the issue over the past decade doesn't help with apathy. It doesn't help that status quo may not be a realistic option: there's a lot of unclear legal issues with little appetite to litigate them. I suspect that Puerto Rico will eventually become a state, but it's politically difficult for that to happen without a clear mandate, and there doesn't seem to be much appetite for providing a truly fair and clear referendum in this matter.
- s2g 9y agoGetting screwed during the last hurricane will hopefully push more people towards statehood. Lot harder to ignore them when they have 2 senators and a rep to raise hell.
- dragonwriter 9y agoIt'll push more people to decolonialization, I'm sure, but where statehood or independence gets the boost is unclear. It won't matter as long as Congress isn't interested in decolonialization.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> The operative word is probably: the most recent referendums were designed to provoke the statehood option The most recent referendum was held only because the federal government preferred another referendum to honoring the statehood win in the prior referendum, which had 78.19% turnout, and a two-question format where a clear majority chose not to continue territorial status and a clear majority chose statehood as the new status. > I suspect that Puerto Rico will eventually become a state, but it's politically difficult for that to happen without a clear mandate There was a clear mandate after the 2012 status referendum. It is difficult when a majority of Congress doesn't want it to happen for reasons for mostly partisan political reasons, and will seize on any excuse to ignore thr clear desire to end the colonial relation.
- waterphone 9y agoPuerto Rico voted overwhelmingly for statehood in 2017, with 97.18% of those voting choosing statehood.
- YaxelPerez 9y agoPeople opposed to statehood boycotted the referendum, leading to a 23% voter turnout rate (one that usually hovers around 80%). That figure isn't really representative of the will of the Puerto Rican people.
- tptacek 9y agoAnd really, how could it be? In real votes you can't get 97.18% of voters to agree that water is wet.
- s-phi-nl 9y agoPoint taken, although there, of course, is at least one exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_sovereignty_referendum,_2013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands_sovereignty_r...
- rhino369 9y agoStatehood is a one way trip. It would also remove some of their automomy. They are so far from America and have a distinct culture. They may eventually want to split off. Best to leave it as a territory. Furthermore, the population is tiny. There are dozens of college footballs with better attendence. It doesn't make sense to give them two senators and a congressman. If they really wanted to be part of state, lump it in with Hawaii. I'd be fine giving them citizenship.
- Kalium 9y agoGuam is torn by this one. Many there, like is American Samoa, want to be able to restrict land ownership to indigenous people. As states, this would not be permitted.
- 205guy 9y agoThis is really the crux of the issue: control over local land. It doesn't really apply on a contiguous mainland (though I'm sure Native Americans would disagree, and to a lesser extent Portlanders and Seattlites), but the issue is becoming apparent in these small islands. It is also becoming an issue in Hawaii, where relatively poor locals are priced out of housing by relatively rich mainland transplants. There are some Hawaiian activists who would prefer their island be independent, though I think unicorporated and have some form of commonwealth (like the Northern Marinaras) would be more realistic. In the end, sovereignty is a spectrum.
- apotheothesomai 9y agoWe should be reluctant to grant statehood for many small territories. Our senate is undemocratic enough, where a state with 1/7th the population of California, viz. Wyoming, gets the same numbers of senators. Guam, including resident military personnel, has 1/4 the population of Wyoming. Does it make sense to grant 160K people all the powers of full statehood? American Samoa has 1/3 the population of Guam, so two senators for slightly over 50K people. That's 84 times the per capita representation in the Senate. The Pacific territories should really just become part of the state of Hawaii. They can have special status within the state, so their needs don't get ignored by the larger Hawaiian population.
- dragonwriter 9y agoIt makes as much sense to give Guam the same statehood privileges as Wyoming as it does to give Wyoming the same as California, it makes about as much sense to merge all the Pacific territories into Hawaii as to merge all the Mountain states into one.
- wffurr 9y agoThen we should just fix or abolish the senate. It's incredibly undemocratic.
- dragonwriter 9y agoThe Constitution prohibits that even by Constitutional Amendment (seriously, the one thing an Amendment cannot do is mess with representation in the Senate), though it doesn't prohibit stripping the Senate of all of its functions and giving them to some new body.
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoStatehood or independence for all territories needs to happen. It is ridiculous that in the 21st century we still have what are effectively colonies.