Santorum: Puerto Rico must adopt English for statehood
Many Republicans share Santorum’s belief, but could it rub Puerto Rican voters the wrong way. (Flickr: Gage Skidmore)
By JORDAN FABIAN
Channel: Politics
Puerto Rico must adopt English as its main language if it wants to be considered for U.S. statehood, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Wednesday.
Santorum was campaigning on the island commonwealth ahead of its Republican primary election on Sunday, where 23 delegates are at stake. One of the hottest political topics on the island is its territorial status, which puertorriqueños will vote on in a November ballot referendum. Puerto Rico currently considers both English and Spanish its official languages, but its citizens and government primarily conducts business in Spanish.
Like his main rival, Mitt Romney, Santorum said he would work with Puerto Rico to become a state should its citizens support such a move. But he said that would come with one important caveat.
“Like in every other state, it [must comply] with this and every other federal law. And that is that English should be the main language. There are other states with more than one language, as is the case in Hawaii, but to be a state of the U.S., English should be the main language,” Santorum told El Vocero newspaper in a wide-ranging interview.
Language has long been a sticking point in the debate over whether Puerto Rico should become a state and it is also a sensitive personal issue for many Puerto Rican voters.
“The question here is the language issue, that’s the issue,” Jose Luis Fernandez, the host of “Mesa Presidencial,” a show on Univision Radio WKAQ 580AM in Puerto Rico, told Univision News. “Both candidates should be confronted by the issue.”
Contrary to Santorum’s claim, the U.S. Constitution and other federal laws contain no language requirement for statehood, but policymakers in the U.S. have pointed out that no other state has been admitted into the union that did not have English as its main language.
If Puerto Rico votes to become the 51st state, Congress must approve the move for it to take effect. Congress has considered measures on Puerto Rican statehood in the past, but none have succeeded.
The notion of English as an official language has also been a lightning-rod topic on the campaign trail. All candidates in the Republican field have called for English to be the nation’s official language, something that political observers say could turn off Latino
voters in the fall, Puerto Ricans and non-Puerto Ricans alike.
“This could really be like the flame that would ignite millions of Hispanics to come out and put another element of pressure against the Republican candidates,” said Fernandez. “There are more Puerto Ricans here [in the U.S.] than are on the island, and they can vote.”
If enough public pressure is exerted from Puerto Ricans, it could “turn whatever outcome that generates into a campaign to get millions of Hispanics in the United States to react,” added Fernandez.
While both Santorum and Romney have supported Puerto Rico’s right to self-determination on its status, they have faced pressure from conservative Tea Party groups to back certain pre-conditions for statehood, such as the language requirement and proof that the island will not place an undue burden on the federal budget deficit.
But Santorum’s statement in particular could put Puerto Rican statehood advocates in a pickle, including GOP-aligned Gov. Luis Fortuño, who has endorsed Romney. Fortuño’s party in Puerto Rico, the New Progressive Party, is firmly pro-statehood.
“That presents a difficult scenario for statehood applicants in Puerto Rico…who say we could gain statehood by keeping English and Spanish as the official languages,” he said.
Santorum, though, defended his 1998 vote to place Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent, on a federal appeals court. Romney had attacked Santorum over the vote, which triggered criticism from Latino groups.
The former Pennsylvania senator said he had no regrets about the vote, explaining that he was respecting Bill Clinton’s “presidential discretion” to appoint judges, according to Puerto Rican journalist Rafael Lenín López.
