March 13, 2014
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In hindsight it seems a bit careless to bestow citizenship on a million and a half people far from our shores. I”m not even clear how it squares with the 14th Amendment:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
Since Puerto Ricans are not “born or naturalized in the United States” and there is no “State wherein they reside,” how are they citizens? Talk about soft categorization!
There wasn”t much gratitude for the gift of citizenship, either. Independence activists committed numerous terrorist acts against the USA. They came close to assassinating Harry Truman in 1950, shot up the US House of Representatives in 1954, and bombed Manhattan’s Fraunces Tavern in 1975.
The appeal of independence to Puerto Ricans at large faded once the advantages of belonging to a modern welfare state became apparent. Of those favoring a change of status in 2012, only five percent wanted independence; 61 percent voted for statehood.
Nowadays the place is”like the rest of the Caribbean behind a thin façade of rich-folk villas, tourist trinket markets, and tax-break corporate frontages”a slum. Thirty-five percent of the population is on food stamps; 35 is also the percentage of working-age Puerto Ricans actually in the workforce. Public finances are in a dire state: Debt is at $70 billion and bond issues are rated as junk.
Plainly the USA should get rid of this millstone. That’s easier said than done, though. In theory I guess Congress could simply end the “commonwealth” relationship and cut the place loose. In practice this would mean revoking the citizenship of the 3.7 million inhabitants. And what about the five million or so Puerto Ricans who reside in the USA?
Another approach would be to get Puerto Ricans thinking that independence might be a good idea. Perhaps we could try oppressing the place: Make them tenant farmers under absentee landlords, proscribe use of their native tongue, and shut down their churches. Hey, it worked for Ireland.
Or possibly we could fool them into thinking they are sitting on great wealth”a Caribbean Dubai. Underground oil might be hard to fake, but we could sprinkle a few raw diamonds or gold nuggets around….
I”m fantasizing, of course. We”re stuck with the wretched place and its unproductive, unemployable people. Those Spanish qualities that General Henry noted are with us in perpetuity, one more legacy of the appalling Woodrow Wilson. Can”t we dig that guy up and hang him in chains, as the Royalists did to Oliver Cromwell?
