An Introduction to the Country of Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico has the status of an autonomous territory of the United States. The inhabitants of Puerto Rico are the US citizens. However, there are different positions about the status of this region. According to Meacham (2015), the number of the supporters of statehood and commonwealth status is almost equal. So, the primary objective of this investigation is to analyze if Puerto Rico should become a State.

First, it is necessary to highlight the fundamental issues of Puerto Rico. In 2015, the government of the US Commonwealth announced that it is impossible to service its debt.

Puerto Rico was not able to declare the bankruptcy. So, the government had to accept the strict measures to slash the budget and hike taxes. These steps were necessary to save the funds for debt payments. However, they were not efficient because the government was obliged to pay the debts before making other financial operations.

So, it was necessary to cut down such areas as public spending and services (Meacham, 2015).

Therefore, the mentioned issues caused the desire of the citizens to change the status of the island to solve the economic problems. The residents voted for changing the political status of the archipelago during the referendum, which was held in two phases. So, 54 percent of voters supported the changes. In the second phase, Puerto Ricans elected a new political structure. 61 percent of the electorate supported the Puerto Rico’s transformation into the 51st state of the United States (Cooper, 2015).

Consequently, it is necessary to reconsider the status of Puerto Rico and make it the 51st state.

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These measures will help Puerto Rico to overcome the crisis using the constitutional and financial protections in the new status.