Is there any chance of Puerto Rico becoming a state?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Would Americans want Puerto Rico to be state however? I think there has been little discussion what this would actually mean, in practice, if it were to happen except for Rick Santorum, who basically gave reasons why I doubt most Americans would support statehood for PR if it actually came to it.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Would Americans want Puerto Rico to be state however? I think there has been little discussion what this would actually mean, in practice, if it were to happen except for Rick Santorum, who basically gave reasons why I doubt most Americans would support statehood for PR if it actually came to it.

If PR were to ask for statehood, it would be extremely difficult politically to deny it. It would, in fact, require taking an outright anti-Hispanic stand, with little possibility of any sort of a fudge - not something one would necessarily want to do.

It is further complicated by the fact that within PR it is the relatively pro-Republican PNP that's pro-statehood, while the outright pro-Democratic PDP prefers the status quo. While PNP is not exactly the local affiliate of the Republican party (it does have a pro-Dem wing, though that one is relatively weak right now), nearly all the local Republicans are part of it. If the national Republican party opposes statehood, it would amount to a complete destruction of the local Republican organization on the island. As Puerto Ricans are US citizens (something that, in the short term is not even possible to change if PR declares independence), they can and do vote when they find themselves living on the mainland.  Oposing statehood would, basically, tell those of them who still vote Republican that their party does not want their vote - in those many words and, once again, without much realistic possibility of a fudge.

It would even be pretty hard to make a principled anti-statehood argument in a way that wouldn't alienate at least some normally pro-Republican Cuban-Americans: it wouldll all come down to the issues of language and culture that Cubans themselves hold dear, and the arguments would undoubtedly degenerate into outright anti-Hispanic claims that would make a lot of people feel very unwelcome in that sort of a party. At that point, being a Hispanic (even Cuban) Republican would become a lot like being a gay Republican - not impossible, but not that easy or pleasant.

To sum up, if the Republican party openly opposes statehood, it would go a long way towards making sure that the Hispanic electorate converges to black levels of support for the Democrats. And, of course, when and if PR votes for statehood, Democrats themselves would have no incentive at all to oppose it. Hence, though a number of diehard anti-Hispanics can be counted on making a few passionate speaches, nobody who cares about national political implications would dare to do anything to prevent it happening.

Yes, I understand that politically it would be very awkward to take an anti-statehood stance if PR votes for it. However, if PR does becomes a state, the US government would surely have to make much more provisions for bilingualism at the level of the federal government and social services. While it wouldn't be like Canada, it would get harder and harder to deny the right of Puerto Ricans to have a significant level (more than now) of government services in their own language even if they live in New York. Given that there is a substantial block of the conservative vote that strikes drives itself mad in circles over "Press 1 for English", I can not imagine that would be no opposition.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

It won't have to do anything. US does not have an official language at present and it already has other states with multiple oficial languages.

Legally speaking, I know. I admit that I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone who does not know the United States particularly well. But I do understand enough to note that over the past 30 or so years and increasingly over the last few couple the Republican Party has become increasingly sectarian in its approach to defining American-ness. While we can scoff at Sarah Palin and her innate ridiculousness but the concept of there being 'Real Americans' is something that has a real (if often obscured) power in American discourse. And while, there can be some debate about Palin meant, I'm pretty sure that c5 million mostly monolingual Spanish speaking, tanned skinned people from an island in the Caribbean do not make the cut. I mean there is a subsection of the electorate that has managed through sheer noise to make the birthplace of Barack Obama one of the most important issues in recent US politics - and that was really about, yet again, defining 'American-ness' in a purely sectarian way and that sort of venom is hardly being restricted to those at the top right now (though the president is most obvious target).

Of course I could completely wrong and the Republican Right will embrace Puerto Rico as one of their own as if were Utah or South Carolina excluding the black parts (though I don't really see how the state will end up voting GOP with electoral and socioeconomic demographics being what they are - its GDP per capita is much lower than even Mississippi, which brings us to the issue of state subsidies and redistribution...).