[Svartalfiar]

Population. Not enough for a state. Ok for a territory.

So what is the right number for a territory to become a State?

60M per the Northwest Ordinance? 52,240? That's what Arkansas had to get statehood. Oregon had the same 52M, one year after achieving statehood. (You'd be amazed how hard it is to find statehood population data..) How about 42M? There's the number Illinois had in 1818. Why not a bare 12M? That's more than the population of Nevada when it was admitted as a state!

[Svartalfiar]

Gah, forgot to finish part II of my post.

Let’s say we set an arbitrary number for statehood. 100,000 is a nice round number, and big enough out of the small numbers of population. (Hell, we can double it to 200M if y’all want!)

How long do you think it would take Greenland to hit those numbers? And then apply for statehood? If they have 56M now, with a huge amount of natural resources (including rare earths!), I’d wager there would be quite a lot of companies moving in to start mining operations, expand the fishing industry, and so on. And each of those jobs generates what, 3x? 7x? in auxiliary jobs: restaurants, hotels, construction, entertainment, etc etc etc. Even if these people don’t become full residents of Greenland, they’re still part of the residing population and will likely be counted towards statehood population.

If we actually purchase Greenland in 2020, I would guess it becomes a State by 2030 at the latest.