Puerto Rico on Wednesday announced a new push for statehood after last year’s effort was disrupted by two disastrous hurricanes.
Rep. Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, the U.S. territory’s nonvoting member of Congress, went to the House floor Wednesday along with a proposed delegation of two senators and five representatives to demand that Congress recognize Puerto Rico as a state.
“The island overwhelmingly voted for statehood in 2012 by a margin of 61 percent and 97 percent in June of last year,” Gonzalez said. Despite those numbers, only 24 percent of the population participated in the 2017 plebiscite that is often cited as evidence of broad support for statehood.
“That’s the request that brought me here, that’s what brings the governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosselló, the Puerto Rico Senate President Thomas Rivera-Schatz, House Speaker Johnny Mendez, and other officials that have come to witness today’s historic introduction of the Puerto Rico Shadow Delegation to this Congress,” she added. “That delegation will demand that the United States recognize the will of Puerto Rico to become a state.”
Puerto Rico’s approach to pursuing statehood changed in mid-2017 to embrace the same strategy Tennessee famously used in 1796, when it sent a shadow congressional delegate to lobby lawmakers in Washington. Six states later followed Tennessee’s example and transitioned from territories to states.
“It is our moral imperative to demand Congress recognize 3.4 million disenfranchised Americans. It is time to end Puerto Ricans’ second-class citizenship, and statehood is the only guarantee for that to happen,” said Gov. Ricardo Rossello, who appointed the shadow members last July.
The delegation’s shadow senators include former Democratic Gov. Carlos Romero Barcelo and National Republican Committeewoman of the Republican Party of Puerto Rico Zoraida Fonalledas.
The shadow House members are former Democratic Gov. Pedro Rossello Gonzalez, former Republican Gov. Luis Fortuno, former president of the Senate of Puerto Rico and current State Chair of the Democratic Party of Puerto Rico Charles Rodríguez, former chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship Alfonso Aguilar, and baseball Hall of Famer Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, who was not in attendance.
Puerto Rican residents cannot vote in U.S. presidential or congressional races, though residents can serve in all branches of the U.S. military.
The island has spent the past four months recovering from two devastating hurricanes, which put the Rossello’s administration push for statehood on the backburner. As of Jan. 10, 96 percent of the island had water and 81 percent had electricity, according to Status.PR.
Rossello told the Washington Examiner last summer that the island would not burden the U.S. with its financial woes if approved as a state. He proposed Puerto Rico would not be adding to the national debt, but reducing it, at least on a per capita basis. The island’s 4.3 million residents would each need to pay $16,697 to erase its $73 billion of public debt, while U.S. citizens living in states each carry $61,364 in debt for the federal government’s $20.6 trillion debt.
