Puerto Rico (flag pictured above) and Washington D.C. are only localities of the U.S. but should be granted statehood. Doing so would help millions of Americans get proper representation in the country’s government (Alex Barth/Creative commons).
The United States was ostensibly founded on two main notions: liberty from tyranny and proportional representation in the affairs of state. While the country has faltered on these two notions since the founding, today there is at least one area that so clearly deserves attention.
Specifically, as many as four million Americans currently sit without representation at the whim of the U.S. Congress. These citizens lack proper liberty and representation only because they live in Puerto Rico or Washington D.C. To properly fulfill the founding promise, the U.S. government should grant both areas formal statehood.
Both areas hold more Americans than multiple U.S. states, but the system softens the voice these citizens would speak with. If it were a state, Puerto Rico would rank as more populous than 20 states with its around 3.5 million residents; Washington D.C. would also rank as more populous than states like Vermont or Wyoming with its approximately 700,000 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Despite their size, both territories have only one Congressional representative who can’t even vote on policies. Neither territory has the two Senators granted to every other state. While Washington D.C. does receive three electoral votes in presidential elections, Puerto Rico receives none.
This disparity between population and voice in governmental affairs clearly props up disproportional representation, but the history provides evidence that both territories have suffered from relatively tyrannical administration.
The federal government has spent decades letting problems in Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. fester.
This fact came to the forefront in 2017 when Hurricane Maria absolutely ravaged Puerto Rico, causing thousands of deaths and the largest blackout in American history, according to Newsweek magazine. While some of the blame for the travesty obviously belongs to Maria’s mayhem, similarly powerful hurricanes in Texas, Virginia and Florida proved less devastating.
President Donald Trump and other politicians had a greater interest in helping Texans, Virginians and Floridians because those citizens have a say in the government. If Puerto Ricans had felt completely snubbed by the federal government, they lack the proper voice to push politicians.
Beyond exacerbating unique catastrophes, political mismanagement drives problems in the long-term. Case in point, Congress has allowed a decades-long government debt crisis in Puerto Rico to continue without proper federal support. The federal government has similarly quashed numerous attempts by Washington D.C. to fix problems from treatment for drug addiction to gun violence.
If Congress needlessly micromanaged a state like Wyoming or Wisconsin in a way that kept its citizens from receiving the benefits that other Americans are promised, the state’s representatives would fight it tooth and nail. Without that proper representation, Puerto Rico and D.C. sit at the whims of politicians who don’t care.
The lack of statehood representation has received consistent criticism. The citizens of Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. have already spoken multiple times—around two-thirds supported Puerto Rican statehood in 2012 and 85 percent of D.C. voters supported statehood in 2016.
In 2015, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, an international non-governmental organization which devotes itself to spotlighting unrepresented peoples worldwide, admitted Washington D.C. as a member. Presidents as politically polar as Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have expressed support for Puerto Rican statehood if Puerto Ricans voted for it.
Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. have suffered for too long without proper representation. Unless the U.S. would grant them independence as sovereign nations, statehood is the only reasonable option.