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Charlotte Amalie
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesEquality for All Americans Is Past Due

Equality for All Americans Is Past Due

This week we celebrate an almost forgotten holiday, on September 17 the United States celebrates the birthday of our Constitution. This profound document provided the Framework for what has become the greatest democratic country in history. The Framers, and those that ratified the Constitution 227 years ago, agreed to fight for a revolutionary idea has become the bedrock principle of our nation and the polestar for countries around the world – that government should be of the people, by the people and for the people. Americans since that time have fought and died in defense of our constitution and in defense of the right of others to live under a democratic government. It is therefore ironic that American right to self determination and participation in the democracy has not extended to its own people; as many Americans living in the U.S. territories are without inclusion in some of the most basic rights. Chief among the denial of those rights is the right to vote for President, and the right to have an elected representative in Congress with full rights to vote on the Floor of Congress.
Four Million Americans live in the territories – American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. This collective population is greater than that of the six smallest states combined and greater than the population of half the states in the Union. The territories sons and now daughters have served in every major U.S. conflict since becoming a part of the United States.
Presently, more than 125,000 military veterans call these areas home. More than 20,000 armed service members from these territories have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The casualty rate of those volunteer service members in the Middle East conflict is 300% greater than the national average. Those veterans and indeed all residents of these areas however, are often mere observers in the national and political process that affects our daily lives. Without the right to vote individually for our President or collectively through an elected representative to Congress with full rights to vote on the Floor of Congress, the residents of the territories are silenced in the debate of which wars Americans fight, which polities drive our children’s education and management of healthcare and other important federal issues.
The United Nations currently lists the US Virgin Islands, Guam and several other U.S. territories as colonies based upon the criteria outlined in the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514. It is disheartening that this blight on American democracy encouraged when our own government, through the Department of Justice, defends this disenfranchisement by arguing against the case for citizenship in recent litigation brought by residents of one of the territories. In Tuaua v. United States, the Department of Justice relies on an antiquated series of 1900’s Supreme Court decisions known as the Insular Cases. The Insular Cases reflect that time periods mores of discrimination, xenophobia and outright racism. By espousing these cases, our administration advances the notion of second class citizenship for territorial Americans who have always been, in large numbers, people of color. The Insular Cases are seen by many legal scholars as an extension of the separate but equal legal doctrine that underpinned Plessey v. Ferguson. The Administration’s reliance on these cases does not serve are nation, the residents of the territory or the greater good of democratic justice that caused the drafters of the Constitution to throw off the impediment of colonialism unfortunately still experienced by Americans living in the territory.
The 14th Amendment guarantees to all American citizens equal protection under the law. Residents of America’s territories are no less deserving of equal protection than other American citizens. The insult of our deprivation of full participation in American political process is exacerbated by the fact that Americans living abroad are allowed to vote in federal elections. Thus, an American citizen living in Denmark is permitted to cast her vote for President while an American citizen living in the Virgin Islands is disenfranchised. This bifurcation of rights would almost certainly be taken as an insult by one of America’s founders, Alexander Hamilton, a much honored past resident of the island of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands.
The right to equality for all Americans is stamped into the American Constitution and rooted in the English common law upon which our Constitution was first drafted. That fundamental principle of Jus soli has long determined citizenship, for those born within the jurisdiction of the government, affords those individuals the subjection to and protection by birth and residence to the government. The equal protection of the rights of US citizens should not be decided by outdated and subjective legal reasoning any more than it should be decided by the location where such citizens choose to reside. The Administration should abandon its reliance on the Insular Cases to continue deprivation of equal protection for territorial residents. This administration should stand with the people of the territories as we fight to secure one of the most fundamental and inalienable rights granted to the citizens of this great republic: the right to have representative participation in government.
Stacey E. Plaskett Esq. is an attorney practicing in the U.S. Virgin Islands and is the Democratic Candidate for the U.S. Virgin Islands representative to the 114th Congress. Her family has resided in the Virgin Islands for over 250 years.

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