From: ahk@chinet.com   
      
   hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:   
   >On Monday, June 23, 2014 2:35:39 PM UTC-4, Adam H. Kerman wrote:   
      
   >>US nationals from American Samoa are free to live and work anywhere in   
   >>the United States without immigrating. They travel internationally on   
   >>US passports. They don't pay federal income taxes on their Samoan income.   
   >>To become US citizens, they would be required to naturalize.   
   >>Puerto Ricans are US citizens at birth.   
      
   >Thanks for the explanation.  But I'm confused--why would a Samoan need   
   >to apply for citizenship while a Puerto Rican is granted it at birth?   
      
   Post-Spanish-American War, Puerto Ricans successfully negotiated for   
   some measure of autonomy. Theodore Roosevelt recommended citizenship in   
   1906. The Puerto Rican legislature recommended full independence but this   
   conflicted with the island's status in US law and didn't go anywhere.   
      
   It was the Jones Act in 1917 that granted citizenship, opposed by the   
   Puerto Rican legislature, worried about being subject to the WWI draft.   
      
   It's probably just a matter of proximity more than anything else.   
      
   Cuba wanted full independence from Spain. Unlike Puerto Rico, it wasn't   
   ceded to US by the Spanish government at the end of the war. But the   
   US interfered so much in Cuba during the decades prior to Castro that they   
   were never truly sovereign.   
      
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