Trump Offers U.S. Citizenship to 32 Million Venezuelans |
Trump Offers U.S. Citizenship to 32 Million Venezuelans
Taking another zany plan by the president seriously because he cannot possibly do so.
President Donald Trump suggested earlier this week that Venezuela should be annexed by the United States. He reportedly told Fox News correspondent John Roberts—not to be confused with the chief justice—that he was “seriously considering a move to make Venezuela the 51st state.”
This is a far-fetched idea, to say the least. Venezuela has no interest in voluntarily becoming a U.S. state, as its acting president Delcy Rodriguez told reporters on Monday. “We will continue to defend our integrity, our sovereignty, our independence, our history,” she told reporters, saying that Venezuela was “not a colony, but a free country.”
U.S. forces managed to infiltrate the country and arrest former president Nicolas Maduro earlier this year, which led to Rodriguez’s interim presidency. Trump suggested in January that the U.S. would play some kind of administrative role over the country after capturing Maduro, but no such direct control appears to exist. Venezuela retains every functional attribute of sovereignty.
I would welcome anyone to join the United States, so long as they do so freely, voluntarily, and democratically, and so long as they agree to live under the Constitution and its principles. I would not support the forcible annexation of any country or territory to the United States under any circumstances. If the Trump administration sought to seize any territory by force or coercion, the next Democratic president would be legally and morally obligated to return it to its previous status.
For that reason, it is worth thinking through the legal and constitutional implications of annexing Venezuela, Greenland, or even Canada—especially since they are not favorable to the Trump administration’s other political, social, and cultural priorities. The United States has not annexed a significant portion of foreign territory within living memory. While Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the Union in 1959, respectively, they had already been organized U.S. territories long before statehood.
It is crucial that Trump specified that Venezuela would become the fifty-first state, not an incorporated territory or some insular possession. (He may be unaware of those options.) Some U.S. acquisitions have not resulted in statehood. After the Spanish-American War, for example, the United States took possession of a medley of former Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific. None of them have become U.S. states.
The United States had no plans to hold Cuba long-term and the island nation gained formal independence in 1902. The Philippines would only obtain independence in 1946 after decades of colonial rule. Puerto Rico and Guam remain under U.S. control to this day. Though Puerto Rican independence and statehood are often alternatively discussed on the island and in D.C., Congress has taken no steps down either path—and in the case of Puerto Ricans, the matter is the subject of heated internal debate.
Trump’s described outcome—that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela immediately becomes a state—most closely resembles that of Texas, whereby a fully independent nation was admitted to the Union without first being a territory. But it is unclear whether Trump has considered the full implications of statehood for Venezuela. The first and most obvious consequence is political representation. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that roughly 32 million people live in Venezuela, which would make it the second most populous state in the Union behind only California.
For clarity’s sake, let us imagine that Venezuela is formally admitted into the Union on January 1, 2027 by a joint resolution of Congress. At that moment, the U.S. state of Venezuela is instantly eligible for representation in the U.S. Senate. The state government in Caracas could fill these new........