Statehood groups want Congress to pass Puerto Rico status bill — with a few changes

A coalition of pro-statehood groups from Puerto Rico — including the leaders of the island’s Democratic and Republican parties — are calling on Congress to pass a bill to change the territory’s status.

While the groups prioritized passage of the Puerto Rico Status Act (PRSA), they outlined a series of changes they’d like to see in the bill before it hits the House floor.

“While we support the PRSA discussion draft as written, and acknowledge that making any changes to it that are not agreed to by all of the parties could cause the bipartisan agreement to fall apart, we believe the Committee must consider making several critical improvements to the legislation before its introduction or during the legislative process,” wrote the groups.

The proposed changes to the consensus bill mostly revolve around one of the bill’s options to replace the current territorial status of Puerto Rico.

In a historical agreement last month, opposing sides of the status debate proposed a bill that would allow Puerto Rican voters to choose between statehood, independence and “sovereignty in free association.”

In a letter to Reps. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), the top members of the House Natural Resources Committee, the pro-statehood groups called on Congress to specify the bill’s language around the sovereignty in free association option.

“​​While the constitutional implications of the options of statehood and independence are clearly understood by the general public, the constitutional implications of ‘Free Association’ are not as well understood and give rise to a significant uncertainty that must be clarified,” wrote the groups.

The groups’ concerns include the use of the word “sovereignty” rather than “independence,” as technically countries under a free association treaty are independent of each other but choose to share certain government services that blur the traditional definition of national sovereignty.

The United States currently has three treaties of free association, with the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia, all of which were managed in trust by the U.S. following World War II and decided to become independent later in the 20th century.

Puerto Rico’s territorial status has a longer history, dating back to the Spanish-American War, and its nationals have been U.S. citizens under federal law for more than a century.

The issue of U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans was a major point of contention in negotiations to design the PRSA.

Those negotiations, hosted by House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), were led by pro-statehood Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón (R-P.R.) and Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) on one side, and New York Democratic Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the other.

Velázquez and Ocasio-Cortez had previously proposed a bill to create a commission to study status alternatives for Puerto Rico, in opposition to a bill for Puerto Ricans to hold a yes/no vote on statehood proposed by González-Colón and Soto.

While under statehood Puerto Ricans would have a constitutionally protected right to U.S. citizenship — as opposed to their current citizenship rights enshrined in federal law — and under independence Puerto Ricans would become citizens of Puerto Rico, U.S. citizenship under the PRSA’s definition of free association is not quite so cut-and-paste.

“Up to now, the legal and policy precedent of the U.S. federal government has been that former U.S. territories which have obtained either ‘Independence’ (the Philippines) or independence with ‘Free Association’ (the former trust territories of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau) have established their own separate nationality and citizenship to enable their orderly succession into nation status with effective sovereign powers over their territory and population,” wrote the pro-statehood groups.

While passage of the PRSA would automatically detonate a binding plebiscite in Puerto Rico, binding the U.S. Congress to its result, the pro-statehood groups cast doubt on whether the bill’s language surrounding free association would be entirely self-enforcing.

“The bill must address whether and how its promise to continue granting statutory U.S. citizenship to individuals born in Puerto Rico can be fulfilled after the U.S. cedes sovereignty over the territory for the duration of the first agreement of the [Articles of Free Association] — or make clear that it is making no such promise,” they wrote.

While the bill’s carefully negotiated language is unlikely to go through deep changes in the legislative process, the future of U.S. citizenship under free association is a core issue for voters considering their choice in a potential referendum.

By casting doubt on the bill’s ability to promise open-ended U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans under free association, pro-statehood groups are making a case to voters who value their current citizenship status, if not their lack of representation.

Still, the pro-statehood groups wrote that they would rather see the bill pass as-is, than for the consensus to be derailed over proposed amendments.

“However, if the choice is between the implementation of these proposed changes or Congress not taking action to approve the PRSA, we would much prefer the approval of the current discussion draft over the perpetuation of the unequal, unjust and fundamentally colonial current territory status,” they wrote.

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