America’s Forgotten ColonyJuly/August 2019 167
mine whether Puerto Rican residents would retain their U.S. citizen-
ship and the right to travel freely to the United States.
At the opposite pole from independence is statehood. Statehood
provides a clear alternative to Puerto Rico’s current patchwork o par-
tial federal taxation and access to federal beneÃts. But it has been
nearly 60 years since the last state, Hawaii, was admitted to the federal
union, and there are several open questions related to possible Puerto
Rican statehood that should be resolved prior to any referendum.
A crucial question is how the United States would respond to a
vote in favor o statehood, as admission requires a joint resolution o
Congress signed by the president. Washington must make clear that
it is prepared to embrace Puerto Rico as a member o the union, in-
cluding by granting it full congressional representation. Puerto Rico
would immediately become the 30th-largest state by population, with
two senators and perhaps Ãve representatives. Statehood would also
give Puerto Rican residents access to full federal beneÃts, including
the ¥¢, Medicaid, and Medicare.
There has long been skepticism that statehood could gain sucient
bipartisan support, given Republican fears that most Puerto Ricans
would vote for Democrats. But although U.S. President Donald Trump
has voiced his opposition to statehood, previous Republican presidential
candidates and party platforms have consistently supported it. In 2018,
for instance, the Republican leadership o the House Committee on Nat-
ural Resources, which has jurisdiction over U.S. territories, called on the
Department o Justice to oversee a Puerto Rican plebiscite on statehood.
I Puerto Rico became a state, its residents would receive full fed-
eral beneÃts, equal to those enjoyed by citizens on the mainland.
Puerto Rico’s population is already aging, and with a low birthrate and
high levels o out-migration, the island will soon have the oldest pop-
ulation in the United States. It would beneÃt in particular from ex-
panded access to federal health-care funding. Many Puerto Rican
families would also receive signiÃcant ¥¢ beneÃts when Ãling fed-
eral income taxes. Access to the ¥¢ would not only alleviate poverty
but also, by adding incentives for lower-income individuals to work,
increase the island’s labor-force participation rate, which, at about 40
percent today, is only two-thirds o the average on the mainland.
Perhaps the most dicult economic aspect o statehood would be
the integration o Puerto Rico into the U.S. tax system. Even after
the repeal o Section 936, Ãrms operating in Puerto Rico can avoid