Puerto Rico State or Not
Careful analysis, serious discussion, and maybe even a national consensus should precede a decision as momentous as the admission of a new state into the Union. Although Puerto Rico has been a commonwealth of the United States since the Spanish -American War, they only recently became United States citizens after a law passed in 1917. They will soon have the opportunity to vote on whether or not they will become the fifty-first state of the Union. There is currently a bill (H.R. 859), passed to the Senate that calls for a true referendum which for the first time in history, would allow Puerto Ricans to choose their own destiny.Puerto Rico is a small island 90 miles long and 30 miles wide. It is located approximately 1000 miles southeast of Miami between the U.S. Virgin Islands and Hispaniola. Its capital city of San Juan, and the surrounding urban area is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. In the past 33 years there have been three votes to determine the status of Puerto Rico. In 1967, 1981, and 1993 the citizens of the island voted whether Puerto Rico should remain a commonwealth, become a state, or become an independent country. None of these votes were binding but were used for opinion purposes only.
Right now there is a delicate spread of funds that has finally started to balance out because of new economic procedures. The coming of a new state will throw all of that off and we would be back to scratch. Many people say that Puerto Rico becoming a state of the Union will be a good thing. In terms of aiding the island, we would be able to offer welfare on a In The House of Representatives, Puerto Rico would gain six congressional seats. These seats would be reassigned from Mississippi, Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin. Glynn Cudrow, co-author of Proposition 209 and Professor of Anthropology at CalState Hayward writes that "there is a mistaken belief that support for Puerto Rican statehood will translate into mainland Latino support for Republicans". According to Carlos Romero-Barcelo, the Puerto Rican delegate to Congress, " Puerto Rico wants statehood, but neither our language or culture is negotiable". Because of this, many political critics believe that the United States, by making Puerto Rico a state of the Union, would in fact be inheriting our own Northern Ireland, or our own Bosnia. Recently, the reputation of Puerto Ricans has been associated with violence as there were riots and the sort after President Clinton released members of a group called FALN. In fiscal terms, Puerto Ric
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Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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