History of U. S. Territories
Did you realize that Puerto Rico is one of five inhabited U. S. Territories, along with American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U. S. Virgin islands?
The capitals of these territories are Pago Pago in American Samoa; Hagåtña in Guam; Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands; San Juan in Puerto Rico; and, Charlotte Amalie in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
I sometime wonder if our moron of a President realizes that U. S. Territories are regions under the sovereign jurisdiction of the federal government (Congress) of the United States, including all waters (around the islands or continental tracts and all U. S. Naval vessels. The United States asserts sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting, conserving, and managing its territory.
Under Article IV of the U.S. Constitution, territory is subject to and belongs to the United States (but not necessarily within the national boundaries or any individual state). This includes tracts of land or water not included within the limits of any State and not admitted as a State into the Union.
The Constitution of the United States states:
"The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State." — Article IV, United States Constitution.
Supreme Court of U.S.
All territory under the control of the federal government is considered part of the "United States" for purposes of law.[5] From 1901–1905, the U.S. Supreme Court in a series of opinions known as the Insular Cases held that the Constitution extended ex proprio vigore to the territories. However, the Court in these cases also established the doctrine of territorial incorporation. Under the same, the Constitution only applied fully in incorporated territories such as Alaska and Hawaii, whereas it only applied partially in the new unincorporated territories of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. A Supreme Court ruling from 1945 stated that the term "United States" can have three different meanings, in different contexts:
"The term "United States" may be used in any one of several senses. It may be merely the name of a sovereign occupying the position analogous to that of other sovereigns in the family of nations. It may designate the territory over which the sovereignty of the United States extends, or it may be the collective name of the states which are united by and under the Constitution. — Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 U.S. 652 (1945)
The United States Department of the Interior is charged with managing federal affairs within U.S. territory. The Interior Department has a wide range of responsibilities (which include the regulation of territorial governments and the basic stewardship for public lands, et al.). The United States Department of the Interior is not responsible for local government or for civil administration except in the cases of Indian reservations, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as well as those territories administered through the Office of Insular Affairs. The exception is the "incorporated and unorganized" United States Territory of Palmyra Island, the legal remnant of the former United States Territory of Hawaii since 1959, in which the local government and civil administration were assigned by the Secretary of the Interior to the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2001.
As a result of several Supreme Court cases after the Spanish–American War, the United States had to determine how to deal with its newly acquired territories, such as the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, Wake Island, and other areas that were not part of the North American continent and which were not necessarily intended to become a part of the Union of States. As a consequence of the Supreme Court decisions, the United States has since made a distinction between incorporated and unincorporated territories.
In essence, an incorporated territory is land that has been irrevocably incorporated within the sovereignty of the United States and to which the full corpus of the U.S. Constitution applies.
An unincorporated territory is land held by the United States, and to which Congress of the United States applies selected parts of the constitution. At the present time, the only incorporated U.S. territory is the unorganized (and unpopulated) Palmyra Atoll.
The United States currently administers 16 territories as insular areas:
* American Samoa
* Guam
* Northern Mariana Islands
* Puerto Rico - Puerto Rico (Spanish for "Rich Port"), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Spanish: Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit. "Free Associated State of Puerto Rico") and briefly called Porto Rico, is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the northeast Caribbean Sea. Originally populated by the indigenous Taíno people, the island was claimed in 1493 by Christopher Columbus for the Crown of Castile during his second voyage. Puerto Ricans are by law natural-born citizens of the United States and may move freely between the island and the mainland.[23] As it is not a state Puerto Rico does not have a vote in the United States Congress, which governs the territory with full jurisdiction under the Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950. As a U.S. territory, American citizens residing on the island are disenfranchised at the national level and do not vote for president and vice president of the United States, and do not pay federal income tax on Puerto Rican income.
* U.S. Virgin Islands
* Minor Outlying Islands: Bajo Nuevo Bank, Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Navassa Island, Palmyra Atoll, Serranilla Bank, Wake Island.
| View or Add Comments (0 Comments)
| Receive
updates ( subscribers) |
Unsubscribe
