Statehood for all territories.
Furthermore, the population is tiny. There are dozens of college footballs with better attendence. It doesn't make sense to give them two senators and a congressman.
If they really wanted to be part of state, lump it in with Hawaii.
I'd be fine giving them citizenship.
Our senate is undemocratic enough, where a state with 1/7th the population of California, viz. Wyoming, gets the same numbers of senators.
Guam, including resident military personnel, has 1/4 the population of Wyoming. Does it make sense to grant 160K people all the powers of full statehood? American Samoa has 1/3 the population of Guam, so two senators for slightly over 50K people. That's 84 times the per capita representation in the Senate.
The Pacific territories should really just become part of the state of Hawaii. They can have special status within the state, so their needs don't get ignored by the larger Hawaiian population.
That doesn't change the fact that the American three branch bicameral system has not aged well and is profoundly undemocratic by design.
The first restriction has now expired. It stated that prior to 1808, no amendment could give Congress the power to forbid the importation of slaves, and no amendment could establish or grant power to establish a direct ("capitation") tax.
The second restriction is still in force, but what it actually says is that "no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate".
So equal representation in the Senate could be abolished by an amendment, if every state ratified it (since that would satisfy the requirement of each state giving consent to "be deprived of its equal suffrage"). It's also arguable that the 17th Amendment -- which changed election of Senators to be by the people of each state rather than by the legislature of each state -- already violated this clause by causing the Senate to cease to represent the states.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+californ... https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+californ...
It is also becoming an issue in Hawaii, where relatively poor locals are priced out of housing by relatively rich mainland transplants. There are some Hawaiian activists who would prefer their island be independent, though I think unicorporated and have some form of commonwealth (like the Northern Marinaras) would be more realistic. In the end, sovereignty is a spectrum.
I think we should offer automatic citizenship and cheap transportation for all citizens of US territories to the mainland, though.
How many tickets do you want to purchase? I am collecting donations. Unless you are just talking...
Statehood won the last two status referenda in Puerto Rico.
I'm a Democrat and would like to see PR a state, but it's not honest to pretend that this is a cut-and-dried decision. There are benefits to the limbo PR is in right now: US citizenship without income tax and much more control over the operation of their territory than they'd have as a state.
The operative word is probably: the most recent referendums were designed to provoke the statehood option, leading to the results being ignored as not providing a clear mandate. Constant relitigation of the issue over the past decade doesn't help with apathy. It doesn't help that status quo may not be a realistic option: there's a lot of unclear legal issues with little appetite to litigate them.
I suspect that Puerto Rico will eventually become a state, but it's politically difficult for that to happen without a clear mandate, and there doesn't seem to be much appetite for providing a truly fair and clear referendum in this matter.
Lot harder to ignore them when they have 2 senators and a rep to raise hell.
The most recent referendum was held only because the federal government preferred another referendum to honoring the statehood win in the prior referendum, which had 78.19% turnout, and a two-question format where a clear majority chose not to continue territorial status and a clear majority chose statehood as the new status.
> I suspect that Puerto Rico will eventually become a state, but it's politically difficult for that to happen without a clear mandate
There was a clear mandate after the 2012 status referendum. It is difficult when a majority of Congress doesn't want it to happen for reasons for mostly partisan political reasons, and will seize on any excuse to ignore thr clear desire to end the colonial relation.