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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Puerto Rico is a part of the United States and its real shame that we don't do more to help it.

Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States, and the purpose of a colonial relationship isn't for the imperial power to aid the colony. That's sometimes a side effect, but the intent is for benefit to flow the other way.

If Puerto Rico were part of, rather than a territory subject to, the United States, they would have representation in both houses of Congress and in the Electoral College.

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And you feel that it is morally defensible to maintain this type of one-sided relationship?

The US is free to walk away and leave it how they found it, which was a worse state than present conditions, even after the hurricane.

No relationship is one sided - it takes two to make it a relationship.

The US doesn't need Puerto Rico - Puerto Rico needs the US.

> The US is free to walk away and leave it how they found it,

The US didn't “find” it, it took it by force.

EDIT: From another colonial power. I’m not sure Spain is really in the market for a Carribean colony right now, so it might not be that easy for the US to walk away and leave PR in its pre-US position.

Well, when they "found it" this is, conquered by force, Puerto Rico was a territory of Spain. With the Constitution of 1812 Puerto Rico got a representative, like the other territories, and he was in fact chosen as Vice-president (= Deputy Speaker) of the House. 200 years later, the US hasn't still allowed them to ever send a representative...

> 200 years later, the US hasn't still allowed them to ever send a representative...

Well, we do let them have one non-voting representative in the House (similar to D.C. and other territories.)

I get this thread is off topic but:

That 1812 Constitution of Spain was a product of the Napoleonic wars and seems to have been basically ignored everywhere but Iberia-proper. So really, PR has never had proper representation to its colonial rulers. And technically PR has had a non-voting rep. in the US house of representatives since 1901.

If I did, I probably wouldn't keep pointing out on HN that it only persists because the US Congress has found excuses to ignore the fact that statehood clearly won by the terms of both of the last two status referenda.

That's a harsh interpretation to make of dragonwriter's comment. I read it as a factual statement about what the U.S. does with colonies by someone that probably disagrees with the practice. That's also a charitable default.

If anyone wants more info on the topic, John Oliver has a great, 13-min segment on U.S. territories along with the clearly-evil justifications for their situation. Wait till yall see the Supreme Court ruling. It should get way more attention in media discussions on this topic. His finale with America's Got Talent contestant is also an epic counter to that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CesHr99ezWE

So Washington DC is not part of the United States?

It's a subject territory which is governed by the US but has magnanimously been granted representation in the Electoral College, but not the Congress. So it's residents are slightly less excluded from participation in their own government than is the case in Puerto Rico, but only slightly so.

But, yes, it was a deliberate choice in the Constitution that the capital district would be a subject territory, a decision which was partially walked back only fairly recently by the 23rd Amendment.

That's an interesting question. It definitely doesn't fit in any definition. DC is on US soil, yet it doesn't have the same political representation of any other cities, states or unincorporated territories. It's an anomaly?

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