Over 200 years ago, the United States of America was just a bunch of colonies controlled by Great Britain. We've all learned this story in school. At first, we were basically self-governing, but then Great Britain started getting too involved for our liking and started passing laws and taxes that we didn't like. We started proclaiming, "Taxation without representation is tyranny!" or "No taxation without representation!"
We were understandably mad, as we weren't getting any representation in the British Parliament, yet had to pay taxes. Which is why it is very confusing to see what the US is doing to Puerto Rico.
During the Spanish-American War in the late 1890s and a bit of the early 1900s, America was fighting against Spain in Cuba and in other places. In 1898, we took Puerto Rico and eventually got a lot of other territories from Spain, like the Philippines.
Puerto Rico became almost self-governing in 1952, when it officially became the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
So, what does this have to do with taxation and representation? A lot?
You see, Puerto Rico does get its representation in Congress. However, their representative can't vote on the issues meaning they just have a representative who can only talk, but can't take any action (which basically describes over half of Congress, even though they are allowed to vote on the issues).
Puerto Rico also does get to pass its own taxes, but must pay income taxes to the US Government.
What this means is that the people in the US Congress can vote on creating taxes for the Puerto Ricans to pay and they don't have any say of it. Sounds familiar? It should as this is exactly what the British Parliament did to the US colonies.
What's worse is that Puerto Rico is now in the midst of a financial crisis. According to the law, though, we can't help them out unless we admit them as a state. So, basically, we have a territory that is basically self-governing that we take taxes from and don't give them representation and we can't even help them out in their own financial crisis! This is a disaster!
We must ask the US Congress to formally admit Puerto Rico to the Union and give them proper representation in Congress. This isn't just a matter of helping Puerto Rico, it is also a matter of our own morality.
The United States of America can not repeat the mistakes of our predecessors. We have an inherent duty as one of the most, if not the most, powerful nations in the world to help our own citizens. I leave you with this quote to ponder from Thomas Paine in his famous pamphlet Common Sense that helped the US decide to break away from Great Britain.
"From the errors of other nations, let us learn wisdom."
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