6 — Policymaking – U.S. territories have been systemically forgotten by the government, and only the affirmative’s pragmatism can provide meaningful change towards equality and recognition.

There are millions of Americans on islands, near and far, that are systematically forgotten and mistreated by our government. They fight and die for our country, but have no right to vote for their Commander in Chief. They are subject to federal laws and regulations, but have no voice in their enactment. They have been characterized as “savage,” “half-civilized,” and “ignorant and lawless” in influential legal scholarship and widely-cited cases by the Supreme Court and lower courts, but continue to strive peacefully for rights and recognition in our judicial system. They endure catastrophic storms, but do not receive the assistance that is freely given to other Americans. They have been described by the Supreme Court as “alien races,” “utterly unfit for American citizenship,” and not of “a foreign country,” but “foreign to the United States in a domestic sense.” They are the over four million Americans on the islands of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. They are the almost and forgotten Americans of the unincorporated territories of the United States.

In 2017, natural and human-made disasters brought the predicaments of several US territories into the national limelight. In August 2017, North Korea announced a detailed plan for a missile attack on Guam in its conflict with the United States. A few weeks later, Puerto Rico endured the onslaught of two cataclysmic Category 5 hurricanes while it was already struggling with an unprecedented bankruptcy and economic crisis. Hurricanes Irma and Maria ravaged an already crumbling island, causing billions of dollars of damage, destroying essential infrastructure, and irreparably changing the daily lives and futures of the people of Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria alone led to nearly 3,000 casualties in Puerto Rico by 2018. The two storms also had a catastrophic impact on the US Virgin Islands, destroying much of its beautiful habitat and shutting down many of its businesses for extended periods of time.

As the American territories continue to struggle with these issues, much of the national and political attention has shifted away from them to the attention-grabbing political topics of the moment. Consequently, the Americans of the territories remain politically powerless, and are forgotten once again. This Article is about these forgotten Americans, their longstanding political plight, and pragmatic policy reforms that could improve their near-term conditions and make them fully and equally American. Building on a rich body of interdisciplinary research that spans constitutional law, business law, political science, and applied economics, this Article offers an original descriptive and normative examination of these unincorporated American territories (the “Territories”). It charts the histories of these Territories, analyzes their current challenges, highlights failed legal reform efforts, and recommends practical policy proposals for the near future.

This Article has two primary objectives. First, it strives to provide a cogent, contemporary narrative for understanding the current difficult legal, political, and economic conditions of the Territories. Second, it aims to recommend politically workable proposals for policymakers in Washington, D.C. and the Territories to improve the conditions of the people of the Territories in the near term. In pursuit of these objectives, this Article recognizes the longstanding legal and political obstacles that have made reforms for the Territories so elusive. As such, this Article does not seek to advance a grand theoretical framework that would hypothetically alleviate all the protracted political problems confronting the Territories. Rather, this Article advocates for more pragmatic, modest proposals that may be less satisfying in theory, but more meaningful in practice in the immediate future, given the current bleak realities in the Territories. Ultimately, this Article aspires to offer a new, workable roadmap for people and policymakers to think and act with greater urgency about the forgotten Americans of the Territories.