To Be or Not to Be: Puerto Ricans and Their Illusory U.S. Citizenship
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The saga of U.S. citizenship granted to Puerto Ricans in 1917 alone spans 100 years. The travails of Puerto Rico's status under U.S. governance stretches over 120 years, during which period issues raised by this condition have been subject of various and conflicting interpretations and views (Burnett and Marshall 2001; Lawson and Seidman 2004; Leibowitz 1989; Lewis 1963; Magruder 1953; Neuman and Brown-Nagin 2015; Nugent 2008; Torruella 1985, 2013, 2014). This American epoch was preceded by more than 400 years under Spanish sovereignty, mostly under outright colonial rule. This period is not totally irrelevant to present circumstance (Carta Autonomica 1897). Considering this historical background, it is apropos Puerto Rico was given ignominious appellation of the world's oldest colony by Honorable Jose Trias Monge (1997), former Chief Justice of Supreme Court of Puerto Rico. In keeping with this unenviable title, over last 120 or so years and, remarkably extending into this 21st century, there has been very little meaningful change in either status of Puerto Rico or of its citizens.This article offers a survey of most relevant historical and constitutional events affecting Puerto Rico and its inhabitants since 1898. Its principal thesis is it is increasingly difficult to claim Puerto Ricans born in Puerto Rico can be said to be U.S. in full constitutional and legal sense. This assertion is particularly applicable to persons born in Puerto Rico who continue to reside there. This question is further brought into focus when one considers this matter in light of enigmatic status of Puerto Rico, an underlying issue permeates problems discussed in this article, and is second major theme is herein addressed.I.CitizenshipThe most obvious common thread in studying subject of citizenship today is modern-day link between citizenship and political enfranchisement. As cogently stated by Professor Rogers M. Smith in his book Civic Ideals, [t]he term 'citizen,' a product of ancient Greek and Roman city-states, was originally limited to only those men who had a share in political life of their polis, not [to] all who lived there (1997, 14). Consistent with this notion, Americans1 began calling themselves citizens to emphasize they were no longer subjects of British crown, but instead creators of a separate and distinct political entity, a modern self-governing republic (Smith 1997, 14).Legally, however, notion Americans' and privileges stemmed from their citizenship status was not established until much later. Ironically, idea was product of an infamous Supreme Court case whose central holding was about who was not a citizen-a case about excluding persons in United States from enjoying and privileges guaranteed by Constitution because of their conditions of servitude. The case is, of course, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1856). As Judge Jose Cabranes of Second Circuit has noted, Dred Scott introduced [t]he notion of citizenship as source of rights (Cabranes 1978, 396, n. 12). This case held, for first time in American constitutional history, that and privileges under Constitution were accorded to citizens, citizenship and membership in political community were synonymous (Cabranes 1978). Congress has used citizenship as a tool for political exclusion ever since. As Smith observed in Civic Ideals, [w]hen restrictions on voting rights, naturalization, and immigration are taken into account, it turns out for over 80% of history of this nation, American laws have in effect declared most people in world legally ineligible to become full U.S. solely because of their race, original nationality, or gender (1997, 15).If ever there was any doubt question of race was a major issue in granting of so-called U. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".