TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida’s Republican governor says he supports making Puerto Rico the nation’s 51st state.
Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday said the United States should “respect the will of the people of Puerto Rico.” The U.S. territory held a referendum last year where more than a half a million voters backed statehood.
The U.S. Congress has to approve any changes to Puerto Rico’s political status. Scott is running for the U.S. Senate this fall against incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, and he made his comments during a campaign stop in central Florida.
Gov. Rick Scott says Puerto Rico should become a state
Can you say “There is a shitload of Puerto Rican refugees from Hurricane Maria living in Florida and get to vote”?
PS: Congress is ignoring the result of the last referendum because almost 80 of the voters boycotted it or abstained.
More than 80 percent, right? The percent got dropped.
I wonder if the residents of PR understand what will happen to their special benefits if they become a state. Things like tax exemptions, the ability to declare bankruptcy… poof.
They want to vote to become a state? It hasn’t worked like that for a couple hundred years now…
I read your headline and thought “do the yankee transplants in Miami/Ft. Lauderdale want to break away from the rest of the state and form South New York?”
If they did that, I would be out of here in a New York minute.
Speaking of New York minutes, if we’re going to create new states, I want upstate New York split off from that progressive sewer of a city that thinks it’s the center of the universe.
We should just cut them free, grant them independence. Be rid of it.
That might be tempting. The trouble is then you have a brand new banana republic, but inhabited almost entirely by US citizens.
We’d be better off creating some new territories. Carve off LA and the SF Bay area into lala land, carve off downstate NY into the rotten apple, demote their Congressional representation to observer, bar their residents from Federal office and in return let them be “sanctuary cities” and give them a token tax break.
I’m surprised we haven’t heard much of that up here in CT given our large Puerto Rican population.
Iirc, at least initially, the most refugess were going to CT because of that already large population with family friends etc being here.
I thimt it’s at the point of cut em loose or make em a state…. Just don’t make me a state until they unfuck themselves so looks like cut em loose is more likely in this scenario.