This Ain’t Hell, a conservative-based political news blog, has produced a rather interesting video. Apparently, unbeknownst to a majority of Americans, particularly those within the mainstream media, a rally was held today in Upper Senate Park in Washington D.C. It consisted of residents of Puerto Rico lobbying for universal health care. The main speaker of the group, who gave his speech in both Spanish and English, expressed outrage that Puerto Rico was being left out of the federal health care reform debate, claiming that they were being treated like second-class citizens by their exclusion from the massive government-run plan.
The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is identified as an unincorporated organized territory belonging to the United States. This means, in short, that while anyone born in Puerto Rico after January 1941 is a citizen of the United States, via the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917, they are at the same time not granted full enfranchisement as mainland citizens are.
It is rather hard to feel too much sympathy for these people. There are a number of things to consider, taxes among them. While Puerto Ricans pay Social Security and local taxes, like every other citizen of the United States, they do not have to pay income taxes. What’s more is that they actually get federal money from the United States government. So while they complain they are being treated like second-class citizens in one area, they are actually treated at a level far greater then the average mainland citizen.
A far greater issue, however, is that while this group of Puerto Rican residents are lobbying for an expanded role in the affairs of the federal United States government, their nation as a whole is moving in precisely the opposite direction. This past June, the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization approved a draft resolution calling on the U.S. government to expedite a process that would allow the Puerto Rican people to exercise fully their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.
You also have to wonder why the people of Puerto Rico are so adamant about being directly involved within the United States health care debate in the first place when they have wanted nothing at all to do with such other pertinent issues plaguing this country like bailouts and cap-and-tax. Hmm, could it be that they know that this is something they’d be getting for free, never having to pay for it? That the mainland citizens of the U.S. would be the ones stuck holding the bill?
Tags: Puerto Rico, social security, universal health care, universal healthcare
