The loss of U.S. citizenship in a newly independent Puerto Rico is typically seen as a legal issue. Last week, a panel of experts on Capitol Hill discussed the matter from a national security perspective.
Speaking to a packed room, legal, economic and national security leaders addressed an engaged audience at a briefing by the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute entitled “Strengthening U.S.-Puerto Rico Policy: A Win for Security & Prosperity.”
The Question of Citizenship
The briefing concluded with a question from the audience about the fate of U.S. citizenship in a possible new nation of Puerto Rico: “Do you think there is a real path that Congress would allow for Puerto Rico to become an independent country, a new country where 100% of its citizens will be citizens of a different country? Do you think that’s a viable option … that Congress would even consider and it won’t affect national security for the U.S.?”
In his response, Andrés Martínez-Fernández, Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America at the Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security, was direct. “I do think it would be hugely problematic both for Puerto Rico and for the federal national governments if 100% of the citizens are from another country.” He continued, “[t]here’s inherent conflicts there….I don’t know how that works in practicality.”
Martínez-Fernández elaborated: “And then on top of that, you know, we’ve been discussing the very real threats of extra-hemispheric actors within the Caribbean trying to exploit vulnerabilities of the United States….an island full of U.S. citizens without any U.S. government presence is going to be a very attractive opportunity for not just foreign governments but foreign actors, non-state actors, to seek to exploit. So, I think it would be hugely problematic all around. I don’t see it being viable.”
China is the primary foreign government Martínez-Fernández likely had in mind when he spoke. A recent report issued by the Heritage Foundation argues that the Chinese Communist Party “threatens U.S. national security by rapidly expanding its military and menacing American allies in Asia and throughout the world.”
The day before Martínez-Fernández made his remarks, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell was reading from a similar script, despite the often significant policy and political differences between the right-leaning think tank and Democratic White House. Testifying before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Campbell said that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so. We see this play out across the globe, in every arena, on every continent[.]”
Campbell continued, “our competition with the PRC…requires deep reservoirs of thoughtful and intensive diplomacy on the part of the United States to step up our game everywhere.”
The State Department’s Long Record of Opposition
The comments by Deputy Secretary Campbell and the Heritage Foundation scholar are consistent with historic State Department concern over U.S. citizenship in an independent Puerto Rico, as stated by both major U.S. political parties. Speaking at a hearing in the House of Representatives on October 4, 2000, Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs of the State Department, Robert Dalton, expressed State Department opposition to dual nationality for residents of Puerto Rico. “Our opposition is grounded in the recognition that the conferral of that status upon the citizens of another nation is wholly incompatible with the notion of sovereignty.”
Dalton, representing the Clinton Administration, pointed out that the United States would not assume responsibility for the daily well-being of millions of U.S. citizens living in another nation. Beyond that, “the United States would be required to confer U.S. citizenship on persons whose admission to Puerto Rico it apparently would not control. This is an unacceptable surrender of sovereignty by the United States with profound consequences since birth in Puerto Rico would guarantee the right to enter, live, and work in any part of the United States.”
Dalton’s comments echoed those of George H.W. Bush administration representative Mary. V. Mochary, Department of State Principal Deputy Legal Advisor, who testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in 1989 that the “United States under no circumstances should cede its power to determine citizenship by the issuance of U.S. passports and to relegate and control its borders to any other authority.”
“Apart from constitutional concerns,” said Mochary, “there are foreign policy concerns and sound practical reasons for opposing these provisions so that control over the issuance of U.S. passports and immigration remains in the hands of a Federal authority. Chief among these are law enforcement interests and the need to promote the uniform issuance of passports.”
The bipartisan concern over continued U.S. citizenship in a new nation of Puerto Rico is also apparent in the comments of Reagan-appointed Ambassador Fred M. Zeder II, who served as President’s Personal Representative for Micronesian Status Negotiations. In 1997, Zeder testified before Congress that “[the] proposal that virtually 100% of the population of Puerto Rico could keep the current U.S. nationality and statutory citizenship and at the same time also acquire separate Puerto Rican nationality and citizenship under a new government-to-government treaty relationship establishing separate sovereignty, is legally inconsistent and politically incompatible with separate sovereignty for Puerto Rico.”
He further stated that guaranteed citizenship comparable to 14th amendment citizenship “is even more implausible,” a sentiment that would be confirmed two years later by the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress.
“This would amount to an upgrade,” he wrote, “based on a vote by the people of Puerto Rico to terminate U.S. sovereignty in Puerto Rico.”
