To access extended pro and con arguments, sources, and discussion questions about whether Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., should be granted U.S. statehood, go to ProCon.org.
The debate to grant Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico statehood pops up periodically in the news or US Congress. Versions of these debates have been popular since the early 1800s for DC, and since the 1950s for Puerto Rico, though debate over the latter’s autonomy or independence even occurred when the island was under Spanish colonial rule.
The United States has not granted statehood to a jurisdiction since 1959 when Alaska was admitted on Jan. 3 and Hawaii on Aug. 21.
The Admissions Clause (Article IV, Section 3) of the US Constitution grants Congress the power to create a new state: “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”
According to the National Constitution Center, the basic process most used for a state to join the Union, and the foundational process used every time since West Virginia joined in 1863, has been for Congress to first make the jurisdiction a US territory, asking for a local constitution that conforms to the US Constitution. Then Congress grants statehood, often requiring the president’s final approval. For many states, Congress has made those steps “a more complicated process,” and required the passage of additional acts or resolutions.
37 states have been added to the United States via Congress and the Admissions Clause after the ratification of the US Constitution, beginning with Vermont in 1791 and ending with Hawaii in 1959. According to Matt Glassman, PhD, Senior Fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, “nineteen were the admission of an entire territory, already bounded and recognized as a political community. Ten were the partial admission of a territory. Some territories became a state, and the residual portion of the territory was reorganized as a new community. One state (California) was created out of unorganized federal land. One state was formed from a bounded nation (Texas). And four states (Vermont, Kentucky, Maine, and West Virginia) were created from land legally held by existing states.”
Pro
- DC residents are American citizens who are treated like second-class citizens.
- Puerto Rico residents are American citizens who are treated like second-class citizens.
- Denying DC and Puerto Rico statehood is a racist and hypocritical partisan ploy by conservatives to deny voting rights to about 3.8 million voters.
Con
- DC was never intended to be US states.
- Puerto Rico was never intended to be a US state.
- Granting DC or Puerto Rico statehood is a partisan ploy by liberals to unfairly gain more voters for the passage of legislation that the majority of Americans reject and which can’t win approval under existing laws.
This article was published on January 21, 2022, at Britannica’s ProCon.org, a nonpartisan issue-information source.