In December of 2022, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Puerto Rico Status Act (PRSA), a bill that would have called for a new vote in Puerto Rico among three alternatives to the island’s current status as a U.S. territory: (1) statehood, (2) independence, and (3) independence with a Compact of Free Association (COFA) between the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
Less than three weeks later, Congress adjourned. The bill was not considered in the U.S. Senate. President Biden never signed it. The bill was dead.
The PRSA was notable for its generous proposed access to U.S. citizenship across each of the three options. The access wasn’t unfettered, and only statehood explicitly confirmed U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans. Yet the bill text opened the door a crack for wishful thinkers to rush in and claim that U.S. citizenship would be secure in a sovereign foreign country.
Since 2022, some of the bill’s followers have argued that because the bill text opened the door a crack to continued U.S. citizenship in a new nation of Puerto Rico, such a scenario remains possible.
The reality is that U.S. citizenship for a new nation of Puerto Rico, with or without a free association with the U.S., remains just as remote as it was before the now-dead bill was introduced.
A dead bill does not dictate or even direct current or future laws of the United States. That’s not how it works. Getting in a bill doesn’t confirm that a specific legislative proposal is possible. It just means it had a theoretical chance. Then. But not now.
There are three nails in the coffin of the aspirational citizenship provisions of PRSA: (1) the daunting odds the bill faced, (2) the uphill legislative process that still lay before the PRSA, and (3) the reality of free association relationships.
The Odds: How a Bill Becomes a Law (or Not)
The PRSA’s fate is a common one. Every Congressional session, a vast number of bills are introduced but few become law. Since January 2025, when the 119th Congress was sworn in, Senators and Representatives introduced close to 9,000 laws, according to Congress.gov. GovTrack.us says that 11,634 bills and resolutions are currently under consideration, 317 of which are about Puerto Rico. Only 46 of the bills introduced have become law. Many of these have been disapprovals of environmental protection laws or the naming of public buildings. None have specifically, uniquely related to Puerto Rico.
Any bill introduced in the House or Senate has a less than 1% chance of becoming a law.
The Process: Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts
Bills generally undergo changes between introduction and signing. As Members of Congress came to learn about the citizenship provisions in the independence and free association sections of the Puerto Rico Status Act, opposition to them began to build. Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), the senior Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee was clear that “[t]he people of Puerto Rico should understand what choosing independence or sovereignty entails: that is, separation from the U.S. federal system and the related benefits.”
“If the people of Puerto Rico want to be independent, that means there is no special treatment and no special benefits,” said Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI).
These two representatives were not alone in their views. The Senate had yet to weigh in. The Biden Administration indicated that the President supported the bill’s “fair and binding democratic process to address the political status of Puerto Rico,” but was clear that it also “look[ed] forward to working with Congress throughout the legislative process[.]” The work was not done, and then the bill died.
Laws are often introduced with the understanding that changes will be necessary before passage. The language in a proposed bill rarely exactly matches the final U.S. law.
The bottom line is that just because a provision was in the bill as introduced, it doesn’t mean that provision is viable. Sometimes a provision that makes it through in the House gets taken out in the Senate. On rare occasions, a questionable provision stays in but courts will strike down part of a law.
The Reality: Compacts of Free Association
The Puerto Rico Status Act cannot actually set the terms of a future negotiation over a Compact of Free Association. That’s up to the negotiators.
After the negotiation is finished, terms of the agreed-upon COFA are included in a bill which must then be passed by both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. This process, last completed in March of 2024, means that although PRSA seeks to require that birth in Puerto Rico during the period of the initial COFA mandates U.S. citizenship, Congress would need to pass a new bill to implement COFA terms if Puerto Rican and U.S. negotiators were to agree on a new COFA. It is this second bill that will actually contain the COFA provisions. Because one Congress cannot bind a future Congress, the terms of the PRSA on COFA citizenship are nothing more than suggestions to the negotiators.
In reality, prospects of U.S. citizenship in a COFA are weak at best. The only precedent on the topic is that there is no U.S. citizenship in current Compacts of Free Association, and officials throughout the government have spoken out against U.S. citizenship in a sovereign Puerto Rico for decades.
