Fresh bill on Puerto Rico location presented by Reps AOC, Velázquez, Sen. Menendez

Democrats in Congress presented regulations Thursday to accept the ball rolling on determining Puerto Rico’s future location, in conjunction with that you might perhaps perhaps be think statehood, and its relationship with the mainland.

The measure, the Puerto Rico Self-Possibility Act of 2021, calls for creating a “location conference” made up of delegates elected by Puerto Rican voters. The delegates might perhaps perhaps be to blame for coming up with long-time frame alternatives for the island’s territorial location — statehood, independence, a free association or other alternatives past its most up-to-date territorial association.

Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who presented the measure in the Senate, said the delegates would preserve formal talks “with a bilateral negotiating commission” of several members of Congress and other federal officials. Alternate suggestions might perhaps perhaps be “effect aside before the people of Puerto Rico to vote in a federally identified referendum for the first time,” Menendez said all over a data conference.

Most Puerto Ricans settle on statehood or some perform of its most up-to-date territorial location. Nonetheless historically, the island’s probabilities to discover independence as an possibility were cramped, especially in all places in the Cool War, when Puerto Rico became as soon as of strategic significance to the U.S. and the nation’s protection force.

Acquire. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who presented the House version of the bill along with Acquire. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., said the measure is as mighty about allowing Puerto Ricans to direct their political identity as it’s “in regards to the identity of the United States.”

“If we would in point of fact like to mediate about ourselves a democracy and dwell as a lot as our values, it’s fundamentally incompatible for an originate democracy to possess issues,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Puerto Ricans living on the island are U.S. electorate but plot now now not vote in presidential elections. They plot now now not pay federal earnings taxes, because they plot now now not possess voting illustration in Congress. Nonetheless they cease pay payroll taxes, serving to fund federal applications fancy Medicaid, Supplemental Security Earnings, the Supplemental Weight loss program Assistance Program and the Earned Earnings Tax Credit, that are normally lifelines in a territory the keep 44 p.c of the inhabitants lives in poverty. Nonetheless as a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico has unequal accept staunch of entry to to the applications in contrast to states.

“A colony is incompatible with democracy, it be incompatible with fleshy citizenship, and we would perhaps moreover just gentle all be ready to accept pleasure from the real to vote for our leaders,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We might perhaps perhaps moreover just gentle all be ready to accept pleasure from the real to equal therapy, and self-resolution is how we are in a position to cease that in a course of that is revered by all.”

Velázquez and Ocasio-Cortez presented a identical version of the bill closing year with 20 Democratic co-sponsors in the House. The fresh version counts over 70 Democratic co-sponsors; the Senate version has seven co-sponsors, all of them Democrats as a change of for Roger Wicker, R-Omit.

The bills are that you might perhaps perhaps be think choices to expert-statehood regulations presented this month by Acquire. Darren Soto, D-Fla., and Del. Jenniffer González, Puerto Rico’s Republican nonvoting resident commissioner in Congress. That measure has 58 co-sponsors — 13 Republicans and 45 Democrats. A version of the bill presented in the Senate this week by Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., has three other Democratic co-sponsors.

Congress has reach below renewed stress to behave a nonbinding referendum in November that without prolong asked voters whether Puerto Rico might perhaps perhaps moreover just gentle at the moment be admitted as a deliver. With nearly 55 p.c voter turnout, about 53 p.c of Puerto Ricans who voted preferred statehood, whereas 47 p.c rejected it, based fully on Puerto Rico’s Elections Price.

In an announcement Thursday, González accused supporters of the self-resolution regulations of looking out to “silence the majoritarian vote and the need of the people of Puerto Rico.”

“It wants to be as a lot as the people, thru their vote, to resolve their future,” said González, who’s moreover a frontrunner of the native political occasion in Puerto Rico that promotes statehood. “This is now now not what the bill presented by Velázquez and Ocasio-Cortez does, which as a change ignores the need already expressed by our people and intends to impose their very bear views upon us.”

Velázquez said there possess been two key differences between the self-resolution regulations and the expert-statehood measure.

The Puerto Rico Self-Possibility Act would effect a binding course of that obligates Congress to behave on the need of the Puerto Rican people and “respects the rights of the minority in Puerto Rico in an effort to resolve half in a limiteless, democratic, and transparent inclusive effort,” Velázquez said.

Puerto Rico has held about a other referendums in most up-to-date years, all federally nonbinding.

In a 2017 plebiscite, 97 p.c of people that voted preferred statehood, but opposition events boycotted the vote, leading to a file low turnout of 23 p.c. In a 2012 plebiscite, 61 p.c of voters sided with statehood, but the referendum became as soon as mired in controversy over how the choices for voters were phrased.

In hand with the plebiscites, identical variations of the Soto-González statehood bill possess unsuccessfully been presented in Congress since as a minimal 2015.

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