Island’s  quagmire of  problems ignored by Republicans in their rush to buy off Latino votes" 

Glynn Custred
March 14, 1998

A decision as momentous as the  admission of  a new state to the Union should be preceded by careful analysis,  serious discussion and a national consensus. Yet on March 4 with no previous discussion, little advance notice and  scant concern for its consequences the House of Representatives voted to approve a bill which would eventually make  Puerto Rico the fifty first state.  The next steps in the process are approval by the Senate, the  president’s signature (he favors the bill) and then a plebiscite which would require the people of Puerto Rico to choose  between  continuing the present Commonwealth status, independence  or statehood. 

The bill, however,  is so written that the deck is already staked in favor of statehood. As Charles Canady, chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, said in a letter to his colleagues,  "from the very start the election is rigged." 

There are, however, very good reasons why this  measure requires careful consideration and public scrutiny.  First consider  the economic implications of Puerto Rican statehood. The per capita income of Puerto Rico is less than half that of Mississippi, the nation’s poorest state.  Unemployment on the island  approaches 20% while unemployment on the mainland it is currently around   5%. Also the island is  plagued by a number of social problems which would  absorb enormous sums of public money.   For example, if Puerto Rico were a state it would rank third in the nation (after New York and Washington D.C) in the number of AIDS cases. Its drug addiction rate of  1,972 per 100,000 is higher than the U.S. rate of  1,176 per 1000,000. Its murder rate is more than two and a half times that of the mainland, and its rate of illegitimate births (an indicator of welfare dependency) is thirty percent. In fact, according to Lousiana Republican Robert L. Livingston (who favors statehood)  "60% of  the population is on welfare".

In fiscal terms the state of Puerto Rico would rank last in  per capita contribution to the federal treasury while ranking first as the Union’s  largest per capita beneficiary of federal programs. This means that Puerto Rican statehood would require a vast, permanent transfer of welfare money from the present states, with their own social problems,  to the new state of  Puerto Rico. 

There are also political consequences of Puerto Rican statehood. Since the House of Representatives is limited to 435 members, the admission of Puerto Rico would mean the reassignment of  six  Congressional seats to   Puerto Rico from Mississippi, Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin. Since the island is a high welfare consumer, the Puerto Rican delegation in the House and  Senate would increase pressure in Congress for expanded social spending and greater welfare dependency. 

And then  there is the cultural issue. Puerto Rico is one of the oldest cultural entities in the Americas, rightly proud of its  language and its  Hispanic- Caribbean heritage. Puerto Rican officials have already made it clear that they would  resist the extension of English and   closer cultural conformity with the rest of the country regardless of  the island’s political status.  In fact some elements in Puerto Rico are so nationalistic and so opposed to statehood that they threaten to resort to violence if Puerto Rico becomes a state. Puerto Rican statehood, therefore, would  mean the importation not only of an enormous welfare drain on the rest of the nation, but  the importation of our own version of Bosnia, Lebanon and Northern Ireland.

There would  also be a serious impact on our own  culture since the inclusion of a proudly  non-English-speaking nation with a distinctive  culture would greatly strengthen the centrifugal forces of "multiculturalism" (i.e., planned balkanization) which are  increasingly pulling at the fabric of our national cohesion. 

The question is why did so many Republicans vote for the bill without consulting their constituents and without  considering the consequences?  For example Newt Gingrich, who refuses to bring the federal version of Prop 209 to a vote, rushed to back the Puerto Rico statehood bill with all his influence and power. Also such  purported conservative Republicans as Buck McKeon, Jay Kim,  Ken Calvert and Elton Gallegly (who voted to kill the federal version of 209) all supported this ill advised bill. 

One reason  was the mistaken belief that support for Puerto Rican statehood  would somehow translate into mainland Latino support  for Republicans. What it reveals, however, is a demeaning lack of understanding of  Latino voters and a willingness to buy them off  with  gimmicks.  It also reveals a lack of principle on the part of far too many Republicans who disdain their core constituents and who are ready  to follow mindlessly  the blandishments of inside the beltway lobbyists.  One wonders how long such a  cadre of elected officials and party leaders will be tolerated before the Republican core constituency finally tires of  their  venality, stupidity and arrogance and abandons the party, thus  reducing it to the status of  a  permanent  minority.

This piece was originally published by the LA Daily News, March 12, 1998, by Glynn Custred, co-author of Prop 209 and Professor of anthropology, California State university, Hayward