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it’s not technically part of the United States,

I feel like this is a really bad way to think of Puerto Rico

There’s a lot of legal weirdness about their status, I get why people think of it that way, and I’m pretty sure that’s how it was explained to me almost verbatim back in like 4th grade.

But I think it’s better to think of Puerto Rico as “part of The United States, but not one of the united states”

That is, it’s part of the country known as the USA

But it is not one of the states that are united that the country is named after.

They’re US citizens, if they wanted to, a Puerto Rican could run for president and do anything that any other natural born US citizen could do, just the same as if they’d been born in Texas.

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tal@lemmy.today ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

I feel like this is a really bad way to think of Puerto Rico

It’s correct. Incorporation is the process via which something becomes part of the US. If it hasn’t undergone incorporation, it isn’t part of the US yet. It’s just administered by the US.

They’re US citizens

Yes. Puerto Ricans are American citizens. (Note: in contrast, American Samoans are not, and are just US nationals, an unusual status related to American Samoa reserving the right to run its own naturalization system.) But Puerto Rico the territory is not yet part of the US.

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- Fondots@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  If they’re not part of the US, who are they part of? Because they’re not considered a sovereign nation on their own, and they’re not part of any other sovereign nation.
  
  The US president is their head of state, they have a resident commissioner who is a member of the US house of representatives and although they can’t vote on legislation they can introduce it.
  
  And as far as incorporation goes, although officially PR is considered to be unincorporated, there’s an argument to be made that various acts of congress over the years have effectively incorporated Puerto Rico, for example, Gustavo Gelpí argued just that in his opinion in CONSEJO DE SALUD PLAYA DE PONCE, et.al. Plaintiffs v. JOHNNY RULLAN, SECRETARY OF HEALTH OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO
  
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