Americans in Puerto Rico can't vote for US president. Their anger at Trump is shaping the race
Americans in Puerto Rico can't vote for US president. Their anger at Trump is shaping the race
Residents say a speaker calling Puerto Rico garbage before a packed Donald Trump rally in New York was the latest humiliation for an island territory that has long suffered from mistreatment.
Puerto Ricans cannot vote in general elections despite being U.S. citizens, but they can exert a powerful influence with relatives on the mainland. Phones across the island of 3.2 million people were ringing minutes after the speaker derided the U.S. territory Sunday night, and they still buzzed Monday.
Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is competing with Trump to win over Puerto Rican communities in Pennsylvania and other swing states. Shortly after stand-up comic Tony Hinchcliffe said that, “I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Puerto Rican reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny announced he was backing Harris.
After Sunday’s rally, a senior adviser for the Trump campain, Danielle Alvarez, said in a statement that Hinchcliffe’s joke did “not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
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Puerto Rico needs to be a state already. Washington DC too.
Puerto Rico periodically votes on whether or not to pursue becoming a state, becoming a state doesn't win except in one vote that was specifically a non-binding vote on the topic and that had much lower turnout than other votes on the idea.
DC was literally created specifically to not be a state, so that no state held the seat of the federal government.
What happened "no taxation without representation" that the colonists fought for in the war of independence? Apparently it only applies to white people.
It was a lie from the start, it only ever applied to a few wealthy old white men who didn't want any cuts to their profit margins after the British fought a costly war to defend them from French and Native retaliation.
Same thing that happened to the WMD in Iraq. And the "good of the people" in Guatemala.
If definitely only did apply to white people. And only men.
Landowning white men to be precise.
That's why they don't pay federal taxes
While they dont pay income taxes to the IRS, they do pay customs taxes, federal commodity taxes, and federal payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment) to the IRS, which sounds alot like federal taxes to me.
It also feels like it's something different because they aren't supposed to go into the general fund, but advance payment for specific benefits
But they don't have a say in how the money is spent or whether the tax should exist. So it's still the same issue whether it's for a specific purpose or whether or not they benefit from it. It's the freedom of choice that they still don't have.
bingo
There is an attempt to conform to the taxation/representation issue, but it's never going to be 100%. Non-citizens and foreign entities are going to be subject to certain taxes within the US as well. At a simple level, there's no way avoid sales taxes. People have to pay sales tax in states they can't vote in either
Sales tax is different. That pays for the infrastructure to get the goods to market, theoretically. Though admittedly that is not exactly true everywhere, the general idea of sales tax is for economic reasons, not residential.
And of course it's not going to be 100%, but we're talking about large portions of the population that were purposely excluded, e.g. women, slaves, etc., in the past, and currently lots of people of all genders and races who live in Puerto Rico, Guam, D.C, etc..
PR alone accounts for over 3 million adults, or about 1% of the US population, with little to no representation, most of them citizens. Wyoming only has about 580,000 people, or about 0.17% of the population, but controls 2% of the Senate, 0.23% of the house, and 0.56% of the presidential election.
We're also not talking about taxes just for residency. The federal government doesn't collect property taxes. I'm just trying to say there is some effort to not burden them unduly with taxes. Do I think they should become a state: yes; barring that do I think they should they be excluded from entitlements: no. The issue of statehood is complicated. Historically referendums in Puerto Rico have failed. At least some are happy with the status quo
Combine the Carolinas and Dakotas, add DC and Puerto Rico. No flag change.
Add DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and we have 53 states. 53 is a prime number, and therefore we would be indivisible.
Got it, so North Carokota, South Dakolina, and DC and Puerto Rico. I think it’s a great idea.
ok but why does carakota go kinda hard
I have no problem with Dakolina either
I was gonna say it's ridiculous to make DC a state, it's just a city!
Turns out more people live in DC than Wyoming or Vermont LOL. So I'm down!
Also I've heard that monkey's brains, although popular in Cantonese cuisine, are not often found there.
But it doesn't have an airport. Or a car dealership. There's a car dealership a few blocks from the Capitol building, but it doesn't have one.
(This was an actual argument from the GOP on the floor of Congress.)
"The Constitution doesn't say a state has to have an airport or a car dealership."
"WeLL It ShOuLd! We DoN't WaNt sHiThOlE sTaTeS!!1!!"
Turns out communism was just a red herring!
A few people were clued into that reference, I see...
IIRC if DC became a state, only specific federal buildings, such as the white house, scotus & the capitol buildings would remain as a territory (due to the constitution), but, because of a amendment to the us constitution giving DC the same amount of voters _(members of the electoral college)_for the president as the lowest-representation (essentially always 3), which only citizens living inside the area would be allowed to vote for, only the citizens of white house would be able to vote for 3 whole electors.
I might be incirrect, as I am not a US citizen, but I've seen this mentioned somewhere long ago
If DC were converted to a state, presumably this would be changed so there would be no district. The federal buildings would just be buildings in that state.
I'm not sure if that's right or not, but there's been some loopholes around DC's status before. For example, all members of Congress are considered city alders for DC. In practice, they delegate that to local elected officials and everything works like a normal US city.
Same trick here. Delegate those EC votes to follow the popular vote of the city.
Look man. I know NC is far from perfect, but don't lump me in with SC okay.
If we combined Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming, and both Dakotas into one mega state, they'd have about the population of South Carolina.
But somehow they get 17 electoral votes to SCs 9 and 10 senators to California's 2.
So I vote for Monomskakota!
As a GA resident right across the river from SC, I understand that sentiment. SC sucks. Those bastards stole our city name and our fuckin baseball team.
But think about all the food down there in SC, y'all can claim it. Maybe they'll take some of the empathy and intersectional community minded mutual aid networks y'all got and we can all be a little fatter and happier.
Plus, we all get more papusas and salpicon!
But first you should probably fix those islanders that aren't even citizens.
Iirc making people citizenshipless is even against international law?
Which islanders are you referring to?
People born in Guam, the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa all have American citizenship (just like Puerto Ricans).
American Samoans don't get citizenship
https://ballotpedia.org/Citizenship_status_in_territories_of_the_United_States
Ok, technically they are US nationals but not US citizens. They still have US passports, but their passports are slightly different.
International law defines a "stateless" person as neither a national nor a citizen of any country. So the UN Conventions on Statelessness do not apply to American Samoans. Likewise the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights provide guarantees of "nationality", not citizenship.
not illegal then, you're right.
But it's still an absolute shamelessnes that they aren't even citizens of the country their homeland, their native land belongs to.
they're not even citizens of a protectorate.
People born in American Samoa generally consider themselves citizens of American Samoa. Even though they have US passports, they can vote for their own government and write their own laws. Including laws that might be overturned by American courts if American Samoans were fully US citizens.
For example, there are restrictions on buying land in American Samoa if you are not a "blood" descendant of American Samoans.
It is prohibited to alienate any lands except freehold lands to any person who has less than one-half native blood...
If a person who has any nonnative blood marries another person who has any nonnative blood, the children of such marriage cannot inherit land unless they are of at least one-half native blood.
In other words, Mark Zuckerburg cannot swoop into American Samoa and buy half of an island.
That's why it's not so surprising that the government of American Samoans, as well as a majority of its citizens, is opposed to becoming US citizens. They have seen what happened to native Hawaiians, and they don't want the same.
Sadly it’s not like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statelessness
Canada, for example, withdraw the citizenship to children of Canadians that haven’t lived at least 1 year in Canada before 18yo
Yeah, people can't have no citizenship.
Edit: my information was out of date
Tell the Puerto Ricans that, we're waiting on them reaching 51% in favor.
They reached a majority vote in favor of statehood in the 2020 referendum. We're waiting on Congress. There's supposed to be another vote in this general election.
Make them a state, or give them independence. The will of the people of Puerto Rico should decide, but the current status is untenable.
they should be a state. if they become independent the US will fuck them over forever.
Maybe Canada could take it? I'd vote for that.
Well, they'd be thrown in with the rest of islands of the Caribbean on that one. That's something that should change regardless.
yeah but it won't. if they become a state they get a voice. if they become independent they will get devastated by the US just like Haiti. and a lot of other countries.
Why does DC need to be separate anyway? Does any other country do it like that?
Edit: yes, a few, but not really any I would look to as role models: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_district
It doesn't, and the reasons for being that way are long in the past. The originally US wanted to avoid any state having the capitol at a time when states were more independent entities than they are now. People weren't really meant to live there at all. Politicians and there staff would travel in from the surrounding areas. Of course, it's evolved way past that, and the citizens of DC deserve the full representation of statehood.