Health insurance

briansue wrote:

Not technically speaking or sort of. They are part of the United States and can vote and everything. Even pay income tax

What I mean is they are not a state. Having lived there for over 6 years I am pretty clear on what Puerto Rico is.

So to clarify - Puerto Ricans who live in Puerto Rico CANNOT vote for President of the US. We got one Rep who sat in the House and could speak and be on committees but could not vote. Even we as US citizens who were officially residents of Puerto Rico could not vote for US President. If we had lived in Mexico or almost anywhere else in the world we could have voted by absentee ballot in the US. But not so for us living in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Ricans pay income tax on earnings from the US but not from earning made in Puerto Rico. For example we had retirement income from the US so we paid our Fed income tax to the US IRS just as though we lived in the US. But we paid no income tax to Puerto Rico. Friends who earned in Puerto Rico paid no income tax to the US IRS - only to Puerto Rico.

At last vote residents of Puerto Rico voted for statehood - this was the first time statehood won after many times it has been brought up for a vote over many years. Politics in Puerto Rico can be very complicated. Anyway, just because they voted does not mean they will become a state - US congress has to bring it up and vote on it and the last I heard they have not.

Puerto Rico is over $70 Billion in debt with no way out. Many of the best and the brightest are leaving on just about every flight out (they are all US citizens and do not need passports or permission). I won't go into a lot of whys and wherefores as this is the Mexico forum and not related. Just wanted to clarify a couple things.

Yes - Puerto Rico is a Commonwealth but then so are Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and Kentucky and Virginia - and also the Northern Mariana Islands - the US also has Territories such as Guam and American Samoa - I think the Philippines used to be. So there are places that can be sort of technically part of the US that are not states - and there can be Commonwealths which are also states - and territories that are not Commonwealths - all very confusing.