DREAM Act dishonors service of Puerto Ricans

The Morning Call ^ | 8/22/2007 | Nelson Quiñones

[cll]

While the federal Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) would grant undocumented immigrants a college tuition discount and American citizenship, the bill discriminates against Puerto Ricans.

Since World War I, when the Jones Act of 1917 granted Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship to be eligible for the draft, Puerto Ricans have fought in every American military conflict. Today, Puerto Ricans from the island serve in Iraq.

~ snip ~

While Congress added Alaska and Hawaii to the union as the 49th and 50th states in 1959, Puerto Rico has been a U. S. protectorate since the Spanish-American War of 1898. After the war, Spain ceded the islands of Puerto Rico, Guam, Philippines, and Cuba to the United States.

More than a century later, Puerto Rico's political status remains unresolved -- a commonwealth, not a state nor an independent nation. Meanwhile, in every U.S. presidential election, 3.9 million Puerto Ricans on the island cannot vote for the commander-in-chief who requests their military service. Puerto Rico's Resident Commissioner, el Señor Luis Fortuño, has a seat in Congress. He speaks on political matters, but has no vote.

The Puerto Rican sentiment against the DREAM Act is because it proposes to grant citizenship to undocumented immigrants after two years of military service. This approach to amnesty cheapens the military service Puerto Ricans have made. In addition, these new American citizens are given the right to vote for the president -- the presidential vote Puerto Rican islanders still cannot cast. The very rights the DREAM Act seeks for illegal immigrants are denied to the residents of Puerto Rico, who are U.S. citizens, but without votes in presidential and congressional elections.

[cll]

The editorial goes on to support a bill currently in Congress that seeks to solve Puertyo Rico's status problem. It is interesting that while some self-appointed mainland "Puerto Ricans" such as Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) jump on the (wrong side) of the immigration debate for local political purposes, others see the so-called reforms with a weary eye.

Also, Puerto Rico is not a "protectorate" of the United States. Puerto Rico is an organized territory of the U.S., labeled as "unincorporated" by an activist Supreme Court back in the early 1900's Insular Cases. The current "Commonwealth" designation refers to a 1952 law where Congress allowed Puerto Rico to draft its own Constitution (as other States have) and to form a local government. Other than that, Puerto Rico remains under the territorial clause of the Constitution of the United States.

[cll]

Puerto Rico Ping! Please Freepmail me if you want on or off the list.

[longtermmemmory]

The Durbin Dream Act is AMNESY II.

It is the piecemeal adoption of AMNESTY.

It makes the public school children ALL anchro babies REGARDLESS OF CITIZENSHIP.

It also makes all those kids in school the anchor for SERIAL IMMIGRATION of Illegal Aliens.

DREAM ACT = AMNESTY

The military provision is a red herring tossed in by Durbin to be able to HIDE THE AMNESTY IN A MILITARY SPENDING BILL.

[mvpel]

It strikes me that there’s a simple solution - Puerto Rico becomes a state and we all buy new flags. Is there something I’m missing here?

[cll]

I wish it was that simple! The current arrangement is supported by the very powerful ($), vested interests of the oldest colony on Earth.

[mvpel]

Well, that’s not too surprising I’m disappointed to say.

[Hiddigeigei]

What you’re missing is that a sizable minority of Puerto Ricans want independence (about one third), a sizable minority like the status quo (about one third), and only a minority want Puerto Rico to become a state. Most Puerto Ricans don’t speak English, have a strong sense of their uniqueness and resent people from the mainland (including those of Puerto Rican ancestry). Moreover, the island is not self sufficient.

[cll]

A third of Puerto Ricans want independence? That is not correct. The only political party in Puerto Rico that supports independence routinely gets less than 5% of the vote in each general election.

A more correct statement would be that the rest of the voters in Puerto Rico are about evenly divided between remaining a “commonwealth” or joining the federation. To that I can add that previous supporters of independence are now flocking to the “commonwealth” party in an attempt to stop statehood, yet that combined movement continues to shrink while the statehood movement continues to grow.

Also, your assertion that “most Puerto Ricans” do not speak English is also incorrect. English is a mandatory subject in all schools from 1 - 12. If you look at the employment ads in local newspapers, most if not all of the ads require that applicanys be fluent in English. I’ll grant yoy that ours is not the Queen’s English.

[Hiddigeigei]

A lot of Puerto Ricans favor independence but fear a Castro-like takeover if they got it, so they vote for the status quo in the hopes that one day independence would be safer. A number favor independence but fear losing the federal hand-outs. A lot voted the NPP for many other reasons than statehood.

[cll]

To that I would add that most Puerto Ricans do not understand the Federalist system and that statehood is independence, and IMO that’s the main reason for inmobility.

Cheers,

cll

[Hiddigeigei]

I should add that the PIP was Castro inspired and communist dominated. If you weren’t a communist that left you with a choice between the Bombaderos and the Fuego Popular. If you voted NPP, you knew that didn’t automatically lead to statehood. About a third of the Puerto Ricans I knew really favored eventual statehood. I did know some ex-army types that were rabidly pro-US, though.

[Boricua on the plain]

There is a 47% who vote for statehood, another 48% vote consistently for the current status (ELA or Commonwealth) that is unsutainable under the US Constitution. There is a scant 2.8% that wishes for the island to be independent. There is a small but powerful group within the PPD (The official party of the ELA)who are espousing a Freely Associated Country status between the US and the island. To understand this one must go back to the 1930’s when Luis MUnoz MArin, the father of the PPD, started his conversion from seccessionist to the more moderate commonwealth stance. That change caused the Pro-independence wing of the PPD to abandon the party and create a pro-independence party. The vast majority of “Populares” are pro-US, are proud of the military contributions of our young men and are against independence.

The Dream Act, in particular, and the entire comprehensive immigration flim-flam is a slap in the face of millions of Puertoricans who have declared themselves present when our nation needed us. Yet, the grand-poobahs of Congress have never seen fit to bring our island out of the shadows of a status fabricated to avoid dealing with the UN’s decolonization comitee, but that is really a political twilight zone that has harmed tens of millions of persons who are citizens but lack representation on hte basis of where the island is. If military service is a tax, and Puerto Rico has sent, and lost more men per-capita in every war since 1917 than any oter state, then we have taxation without representation. And that is something that geko-faced Gutierrez neglects to point out as he advocates for his ideal of independence for the island.

The NPP is essentially a one issue party. Satehood.

[Hiddigeigei]

I haven’t lived in PR since the mid 1970s. Maybe things are different now.

[cll]

Welcome to Free Republic.

[Boricua on the plain]

What is even harder tounderst and, since Mr. Quinones brings in an Allentown city council moion, is what in the heck is the PRLDEF getting involved in legal battles affecting illegal aliens, when our people are not only legally present, but end up competing for low rung emploment with illegal aliens from Mexico, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

I left th island in the 1980’s and was last there some five years ago. hile it is true that the power that be, have kept the people from understanding federalism, ours is a fairly well educated and hard-working people who can easily be educated in the matters of federalism as qe already live under the whims of Congress. For me, any congressman who puts the welfare of a gagle of foreign lawbreakers above the prootion of statehood, for a couple of million of citizens who live on US soil, is certainly not going to get my vote. As to “El Gecko” Gutierrez, he can go and shack up with Elvira, for all I care.

[Hiddigeigei]

Your mention of Muñoz Marín reminds me of a somewhat funny story.

Back in the late 1930s my mother was friends with several of his daughters (Libertad and America, I think their names were). As a little boy I first met Libertad when she came into my mother’s office dancing the Hula Hula. For a number of years I thought PR must be part of Hawaii.

Mother told me later that one of them married a Foreign Service officer, who treated her very badly.

[Boricua on the plain]

Munoz was an odd cat. He once passed a law that no child could be born without a father... In other words, out of wedlock children would no longer go fatherless. Then he recognized one he had fathered. After being a seccesionist, in the 1930’s, just like his dad, Luis Munoz Rivera, he became the nationalists’ worst enemy. Apparently power was stronger than his formative ideology.

Don’t worry, the education given in the US is deep in some areas, but lacks breadth. This is a country of highly trained technicians and not of inspired conceptual theoric minds. Our politics are a clear example. Our president is a worst case example. he knows a lot about what he knows. Unfortunately it is all in the field of nothing.

I really don’t think the foreign service employment paid any part in her marital misadventures. He could just as easily been a physician.