House approves bill to let Puerto Ricans vote to become 51st state

[Little Dragon]

The approval of this bill will change nothing.

Things to consider:

* The bill will probably not pass in the Senate. If it does, then…

* The bill was introduced by the non-voting delegate from PR in Congress. He is a member of the statehood party, which has never won a referendum on the island. So, he decides to create an artificial majority. None of the alternative groups has 50+, but the largest group is the one that wants status quo (47%-48%). In this bill, a first referendum would create an all-against-status-quo group which will surely win. In the second referendum, the statehood option is the largest group and will likely win, since the Independence group is small, and the status quo gets divided into two groups: Associated Sovereignty or Status quo (due to internal problems of this option). Result: Statehood will win second referendum. What will happen?

* There are 4.1 million Puerto Ricans stateside (which I won´t include for the count) and 4 million Puerto Ricans on island. If PR were to become a state, with a population larger than 23 states, it would have 7 Congress delegates. These 23 state will lose voting power. Before I forget, that is 4 million inhabitants, out of which only 30% speak English.

If statehood wins, it´ll go back to Congress, and because of what was said in the previous paragraph, it will probably won´t pass.

In addition,

* The expression "Puerto belongs to, but it is not part of the USA" summarizes the US govt position regarding the island. Puerto Rico status, as per recent federal court decisions, is the same as Guantanamo Bay.

* Puerto Rico is a unicorporated territory of the USA. This means that when Puerto Rico was acquired by the US in 1898, its status was that of non incorporation. Unlike Hawaii and Alaska, which were incorporated territories and went on to become states, that option has never being in the table for Puerto Rico since day one. Non-incorporation is a territory not on path to statehood.

* If PR were to become a state, the new state would have a 45.4% (2006 U.S. Census) of the population below poverty levels, 15.3% (2009) unemployment, $3.3 billion government deficit. With the amount of capital that the US would have to invest on the island, I don´t think this would pass Congress.

* Not to add the monopoly and monopsony that the US industry has in PR, and this would create a large lobbying move against statehood.

Because of these, I don´t think anything will change, although some things should change as today´s Puerto Rico being ruled by a President and a Congress for which Puerto Ricans have no vote is as undemocratic as it goes.