'As long as we get in': Puerto Rican leader hopes Trump will grant statehood

18 February

Puerto Rican flag. Alex Barth/Wikimedia Commons

Looking at President Donald Trump’s promises to expand the U.S. by claiming Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, some leaders from Puerto Rico — a US territory — hope to gain statehood, NOTUS reported Tuesday.

Trump has said multiple times that Canada, for example, should become a state. “If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100% certain that they’d become a state,” he said recently.

George Laws García, the Puerto Rico Statehood Council’s executive director, told NOTUS statehood could align with Trump’s “strategic focus” on “building out America’s influence.”

“He’s looking at places like Greenland, like Canada and like the Panama Canal as places of absolutely critical geostrategic interest to the United States,” Laws García said. “There is a great opportunity for Puerto Rico within this context to essentially showcase the immense value that we bring to the United States.”

“Even though we are natural-born United States citizens, and we’re subject to U.S. federal laws and to the jurisdiction of the federal executive and the federal judiciary, we do not have full participation in the U.S. Congress,” Laws García added.

“We urge all Republican leaders to join this effort for equality and Statehood for Puerto Rico,” the Puerto Rico Young Republican Federation posted on X over the weekend. “It is time to include American citizens residing in Puerto Rico in President Donald Trump’s ‘Golden Age.’”

Puerto Rico became a territory in 1898, and Puerto Ricans gained U.S. citizenship in 1917.

Last year at a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating pile of garbage.” But advocates argue that Puerto Rican statehood could fit with Trump’s agenda.

“This president, since his swearing-in, has been very vocal about expanding the territorial area of the United States for national security and economic reasons,” the chairman of the statehood council, José Fuentes-Agostini, told NOTUS. “We are thrilled with his position because we feel that the primary reason to make Puerto Rico a state is precisely for national security reasons and economic development reasons.”

“If the president decides that he’s going to push to join to the union two or three states, well, fine. We want to be one of them,” Fuentes-Agostini said. “We don’t have to be 51, we can be 52 or 53, as long as we get in.”

Many Republicans have been against statehood because they assume Puerto Ricans would vote for Democrats.

“It’s assumed that if it becomes a state, it’ll automatically elect two Democrats to the Senate and four Democrats to the House — not necessarily true,” Laws García said. “Puerto Ricans are swing voters that are gettable both by the Democratic and the Republican Party.”

"We shouldn’t be deciding admission of states based on their political inclination,” he added. “We should be doing it based on merit, and Puerto Rico has earned its place in the United States.”

Fuentes-Agostini was Puerto Rico’s attorney general and aided Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“Donald Trump wants us all to share in the nation’s prosperity by lowering taxes and ensuring jobs come back and stay in our country,” he said in a video posted to YouTube by the Republican party in 2016.

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