Puerto Rico Statehood EXPLAINED

The Republican Party officially supports Puerto Rican statehood:

"We support the right of American citizens of Puerto Rico to be admitted to the Union as a fully sovereign state. We also recognize the historical significance of the local referendum in 2012 in which… 61% chose statehood. Once the 2012 local vote for statehood is ratified, Congress should approve an enabling act with terms for Puerto Rico's future admission as the 51st state of the Union."

And then as the Speaker of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives concluded,

With a Republican majority and a Republican president, armed with the party’s platform, there shouldn’t be any more excuses or delays. The American citizens in Puerto Rico are entitled to the same rights and protection as their counterparts living on the other fifty states. The people have spoken.

So if the Republican Party supports Puerto Rico statehood then why didn’t they put it up for a vote?

They didn’t vote for it because they were lying. You don’t understand American politics if you actually thought Republicans would’ve admitted Puerto Rico as the 51st State. The truth is that Republicans were pretending to support it to avoid being called racist and therefore losing even more of the Hispanic vote.

As an unabashed conservative, I’ll give you the low-down: we don’t support Puerto Rico statehood because it comes down to patriotism, power, and money.

PATRIOTISM
The fact is that the 2012 and the 2020 referendums were far from a mandate for statehood.

In 2012 eligible voters were presented with two choices: (1) continue with Puerto Rico's territorial status, or (2) indicate the political status they preferred from three possibilities: statehood, independence, or a sovereign nation in free association with the United States. Only 54% voted for (2) and of that slim majority only 61% voted for statehood. In other words, only 44% of all voters chose statehood.

And then in 2020, for the first time in the territory's history, only one direct question was asked: "Should Puerto Rico be admitted immediately into the Union as a State?” With a turnout of just 55%, only 52% voted for statehood.

Now would you want someone joining your lifetime membership club who was only about 50% sure they want to join?

And where they primarily want to join NOT because they like your club, but because they want to get more money out of it?

If you look at the campaign for Puerto Rico statehood it wasn’t about how great America is and what an honor it would be to join the ranks of the other 50 states, but it was all about how they could get more federal aid and then be able to declare bankruptcy, i.e. not pay people back who they took money from.

And the fact is statehood remains a highly polarizing issue on the island where there’s a large vocal minority who actually wish to move in the opposite direction by declaring independence from America altogether, which to be honest, I find absurd given how much the American federal government has done for them.

The United States help free Puerto Rico from Spanish colonial rule, provided American citizenship to Puerto Ricans, and then gave them all sorts of subsidies and tax loopholes.

But unfortunately, American kids are miseducated by the TV and the Teachers Union into an obsessive focus on America’s imperfections rather than how much good America has done for the world relative to every other nation on Earth. The greatest transgression the United States has perhaps made against Puerto Rico is that we’ve been too generous because by giving them so much money it made it easier for their island government to hide its incompetence and corruption behind the money and businesses paddling in. In the name of being helpful, we also imposed a high federal minimum wage on the island, which undoubtedly destroyed a lot of their jobs, therefore, forcing more of their population onto welfare.

READ MORE @ https://www.quora.com/profile/Anthony-Galli-5