By Jim Wyss | Bloomberg
Public help for a proposal that might set off a referendum to find out Puerto Rico’s political future can be key to forcing the measure by means of the US Senate the place it faces stiff Republican resistance, U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva mentioned.
“There's a normal understanding that legacies have to vary and that the legacy of Puerto Rico being a colony for 124 years is a legacy that has to vary,” Grijalva, D-Ariz., mentioned in a phone interview Saturday from Puerto Rico. “I feel there can be an excessive amount of public initiative to maneuver this ahead and I hope the Senate pays consideration.”
Grijalva, the chair of the Home Committee on Pure Sources, was within the U.S. territory with different Home Democrats over the weekend in search of public suggestions on the measure referred to as the Puerto Rico Standing Act.
If handed, the measure would require Puerto Ricans to select from three choices: independence, statehood, or sovereignty in free affiliation with the U.S. Not like earlier plebiscites, this one could be binding and would require Congress to implement the brand new standing.
Grijalva pushed again towards the concept that the invoice, but to be launched in committee, had no probability within the Senate.
“I wouldn’t underestimate the significance of this challenge,” he mentioned. “The Home has to do its job after which the Senate must do its job.”
The island of three.2 million folks has been a U.S. possession since 1898 when William McKinley’s administration seized the colony on the finish of the Spanish-American Warfare.
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