Most people think the United States is just 50 states, but that's not actually true.
Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode, I want to talk about the United States and certain places that people don't always think about when they think of the US.
We all know that the United States gets its name from the states that comprise the US, but there are actually some territories that are part of the US, places where people live who are United States citizens, even though they don't live in what we typically think of when we think of the US.
So, if you want to hear about these places and the future of these places well, of course, improving your vocabulary then follow along, because we're about to begin.
Before we get started, I just want to remind you to look at the description of this podcast episode.
There you will find helpful links like how to take a class with me and the vocabulary list.
Now let's talk about the United States.
The first thing to know is that there are 50 states in the U.S.
Those states are actually represented on our flag as the stars on the flag.
So there are 50 stars on the American flag, which represent the 50 states.
However, besides these states, there are actually some territories and districts that make up the US.
And that's really what I want to focus on today.
There has been so much talk in the news about a potential 51st state, about Canada maybe becoming the 51st state or Greenland becoming the 51st state, even though they definitely do not want to.
I just really wanted to talk about these particular territories that maybe could become states someday, some places that actually want to become states, some places that don't, and just basically talk about these other areas, because these are places that you don't think about when you think of the US.
Now we're going to start by talking about the federal district, the only federal district in the United States.
Do you know which one I'm talking about?
If you don't, it's okay.
A lot of American citizens really don't even know this or are a little bit confused by this whole concept.
But the district that I am talking about is the District of Columbia, which is also known as Washington DC.
That's right.
That DC part means District of Columbia because this is a federal district.
In our constitution, there's actually an article that created this piece of land and made it so.
It is not a state.
It is not one of the 50 states and was made specifically to become the United States Capitol.
The Washington part of the name comes from President Washington, George Washington, who was our first president.
I did an episode where I talked about the presidents who are on the money here in the U.S.
Washington DC of course includes the White House, the congressional buildings, all of the federal buildings that are very important in our nation's capital.
However, it also is a city and this is where things get a little bit confusing.
There are states that are around Washington DC and these states actually gave up some of their territory to make this capital city.
There are people who live there, a lot of people who live there, and they are able to elect a mayor who helps run the city.
It does not get to have representatives or senators, but people who live there are able to vote for president.
And they actually get three electoral college votes.
I've done an episode on the electoral college system, because that is the system that the United States uses to elect its presidents.
Now there has been a lot of talk for years for probably most of my lifetime about making Washington DC a state.
There were actually hearings about this at the beginning of Joe Biden's presidency.
There is a strong movement to make it a state, but it still is not a state.
Personally, I find it a little bit funny and a little bit sad that there is all this talk in the media about making Canada a state when it is its own country.
Or the United States taking Greenland for some reason.
When there is a city.
In the United States, where people are American citizens who want to become a state and are not able to.
We've talked about why they would want to become a state because they don't have the ability to elect members of Congress.
But let's talk about why they are not a state yet.
The number one reason why Washington, D.C. is not a state has to do with the Constitution.
The Constitution of the United States is extremely hard to change.
You have to have this whole procedure.
It has to get overwhelming support from the states that are currently part of the United States, and it's really difficult to do.
It hasn't been done in decades because it is so difficult.
There is a way to get around that, to still make it a state while not changing the Constitution.
And this is something that the Democratic Party leaders have suggested.
The way to do this would be to keep the White House and the federal government buildings as Washington DC, but take out the parts where people live and actually turn that into a state.
That way, Washington, D.C. still exists.
You still have the White House and Congress and the Supreme Court all within Washington DC, but the space that Washington DC currently takes up would get smaller and then the area where people live could become a state.
This seems like a logical thing to do.
It seems like a relatively easy thing to do.
But like I said, it has not happened.
And that brings us to the second reason why Washington, D.C. is not a state.
The second reason is because of the racial makeup of the people who live in the District of Columbia.
Washington DC is a very diverse city.
About 45% of people who live there are African American.
And when you look at how people vote, the racial group that is the most loyal to the Democratic Party are African Americans.
They are overwhelmingly Democrats and they almost always support Democratic candidates.
Each state automatically gets two senators.
If Washington DC were to become a state, that means that there would be two more Democratic senators added to the Senate.
The total would go up to 102.
And those two new senators, I can almost guarantee you, would be Democratic senators.
That means that there is not a reason for the Republican members to support the idea of DC statehood.
Doing so would actually limit their power, reduce their power.
I know here in the United States, people do not like to give up power.
I would assume that it is the same in every country around the world.
People just do not like to give up power.
So I don't think that that will happen.
Now, if you ask the Republicans why they don't want to have DC become a state, they will say it has to do with the size of Washington DC, that there are not enough people who live there.
But, like I said, there's 700000 people who live in the city and that is larger than at least two states.
Wyoming is the smallest in terms of population and then Vermont, I think, has about 600000 or so people.
Those two states are already smaller in terms of population.
Alaska has about the same population as Washington, D.C.
It really depends on the year.
Some years it's more, some years it's less, but they're roughly the same amount.
So the argument that it's because of population really doesn't make any sense.
There's also another argument that Washington DC doesn't have the things that are required to become a state.
I think one of the senators during the hearings had a list of things that Washington DC did not have, and so therefore it should not become a state.
There is nothing in the Constitution that says a state has to have a list of things in order to be a state or remain a state.
So again, that's just a made up reason.
There's no logic behind that.
It's just them not really wanting D.C. to become a state.
Now another argument that Republicans make is that the nearby states, who gave up territory originally for DC to become the capital city, could just take those residential areas back.
So Washington DC, the parts where people live, could change and become part of the state of Maryland or Virginia.
Republicans have suggested Maryland because Maryland is a democratic state already.
So it wouldn't change anything.
Democrats, of course, don't want to do that because that means they wouldn't gain any power.
There is some talk about maybe splitting it, so some would go to Maryland and some would go to Virginia.
Things might change in Virginia if part of the city of Washington, D.C. became part of Virginia.
You would have new Democratic voters.
Of course, that means Republicans don't like that option, so...
There's really no agreement between the two parties, and for that reason I don't think it's going to become a state anytime soon.
Now, the next group that we're going to talk about are territories.
These are not districts.
These are territories.
They are outside of the United States, but in these territories English is at least one of the languages that is spoken and American dollars are used as currency.
We're going to start with the largest and the most famous, and that is Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, and it is also a Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth part for Puerto Rico means that they are able to elect their own governors.
They have a lot of freedom when it comes to making laws and governing their own territory.
People who live in Puerto Rico are United States citizens.
And they are able to come freely to the United States because they do have a United States passport.
In terms of language, English is spoken there, but Spanish is the more common language.
A lot of instruction is done in Spanish when it comes to schooling.
And a lot of people at home speak Spanish there.
Because it is a territory, it does not have representatives who are able to vote in Congress.
They are able to send representatives to the U.S.
Congress, but those people that they send are not able to vote on any laws.
If you do live in Puerto Rico, you are also not able to vote for president.
But the parties, the Democratic and Republican parties, do have primaries there.
The primary is when you have multiple candidates who are running.
People who belong to those parties are able to vote and say who they want to be the nominee for that political party.
But when it comes time to actually elect a president in November, they're not able to vote for someone.
However, if they do move to the United States because they are U.S. citizens, they are able to vote.
And because Florida is the closest to Puerto Rico, there are a lot of Puerto Ricans who live in that state.
Just like Washington DC.
There has been a lot of talk about making Puerto Rico a state, but just like with Washington DC, this is also controversial.
One of the reasons this is so controversial is because there is a lot of disagreement among Puerto Ricans themselves as to whether or not they want to become a state.
In the 1990s, there was an election and people voted not to become a state.
Then in 2012, there was a vote and 60 of voters said they did want to become a state, but still nothing happened.
Obviously, they are not a state, so nothing really changed there.
A couple years later, in 2017, there was yet another vote.
This time, 97% of voters said they wanted to become a state.
That seems like a huge number.
Almost everyone who voted said they wanted to become a state.
But there's a problem.
Only about 23% of people who could vote, eligible voters, actually voted.
So the vast majority of people did not vote.
And that 97% probably isn't a good reflection of the true feelings of the people of Puerto Rico.
In 2020, there was yet again another vote, and this time it was only 52 who said they wanted to become a state.
That means that, even though there are a lot of people who would like to become a state, there are definitely a lot of people who would not want to become a state.
Another reason why it's controversial to make Puerto Rico a state has to do with the financial circumstances of the island.
The island also has a lot of debt.
The public debt is about 70 billion dollars which is really high.
The island, during hurricane season, gets hit with a lot of hurricanes, and those hurricanes do a lot of damage.
It costs a lot of money to repair the island, the infrastructure of the island, such as the roads and the power system.
And all of that is a very expensive thing to do, which means that the island has to take on more debt.
There is an argument that Puerto Rico is not in a good enough financial situation to become part of the United States, that the United States would have to give it a lot of money to help it with its financial situation.
The United States would maybe tell it that it has to borrow less money, that it has to do a better job with its budget.
So there's some worry that maybe some services would get cut, that it would actually lose money from doing that.
So there's some worry on that end.
And of course, another reason has to do with the ethnic makeup of the island.
There is this thought that, just like Washington DC, if it were to become a state, it would become a democratic state.
Maybe that's true.
Maybe it's not.
There definitely are Hispanic and Latino voters who vote for the Republican Party.
That number has been increasing in recent years.
But there definitely is concern from Republicans, because there's.
It would mean giving up power, limiting their own power, if Puerto Rico were to become a state.
And the last reason is because there is so much national pride in Puerto Rico.
Puerto Ricans are very proud of their island.
They're very proud to be where they're from.
Celebrities who are from Puerto Rico are very proud of their heritage.
If you watch the Olympics, you might have noticed that there are athletes who compete under the Puerto Rican flag because they do have that deep pride in their heritage and in their island.
Our next territory is another Commonwealth, but it is a lot less known than Puerto Rico.
It is Northern Mariana Islands, which are located in Micronesia in the Pacific Ocean.
These islands are pretty small.
There's only about 47,000 people who live in the Northern Mariana Islands.
And I will say, as someone who has a pretty good knowledge of these territories, this is one of the ones that even I tend to forget about.
I think if you were to ask the average American if they could name this particular territory, I'm really not sure if most of them would be able to do it.
Just like Puerto Rico, people who live on the Northern Mariana Islands are United States citizens.
However, it is a Commonwealth of the U.S.
It does have a certain level of autonomy, just like Puerto Rico does.
They are able to do a lot of self-governance on the island.
The island has its own constitution. and they are able to vote in the political party primaries.
They do send delegates to the party conventions, which is when the parties officially nominate their nominee for president.
They do do that.
They are able to vote in that process.
But when it comes time for the actual election of the president Of the United States, they are not able to vote and they are not able to have voting representatives in Congress.
They are able to send members to Congress, but those members are not able to vote, so they do not have any voting rights there.
They are US citizens though, so they could move to the United States if they lived in one of these states or in Washington DC.
They could vote for president in that case.
Right now, there is not a movement to become a state.
Like I said, most Americans really don't even think of the Northern Mariana Islands.
There is not a movement for statehood, and they most likely will just stay as a U.S. territory.
Two other islands that are territories are the U.S.
Virgin Islands and Guam.
These islands are not commonwealths, so they don't have the same rights as Puerto Rico or the Northern Mariana Islands, but they still do have their own local constitution.
They can vote in political primaries and they are able to serve in the military.
They are us citizens, which means they could move at any time to the united states.
They could vote here, but while they are in guam or in the us virgin islands they are not able to do that.
Guam is just south of the northern mariana islands.
Guam has a population of about a hundred and seventy thousand.
Guam is known for having a military base, so a lot of US service members do go to Guam during their time when they are in the US military and the US
Virgin Islands has a population of about 87,000.
These islands are located in the Caribbean just east of Puerto Rico.
Just like the Northern Mariana Islands, there is no movement for statehood.
Guam and the U.S.
Virgin Islands are pretty content with staying as US territories and most likely will stay that way for the foreseeable future.
There is probably no change that will be happening to that status.
And our last territory has its own special rules.
It's a little bit different from the other territories.
And that is American Samoa.
One thing to know is that there is Samoa and then American Samoa.
And those are two different things.
American Samoa is the U.S. territory and they do have their own constitution.
They do use the US currency, the US dollar, as their currency, but they also have some special rules.
Unlike the other territories that we have talked about, people who are born in American Samoa are not US citizens.
They're US nationals.
They do get a us passport, but it says us national, not us citizen.
They are able to travel to the united states freely because they are us nationals and because they are still considered americans.
However, If they move to the US, they are not able to vote because they are not citizens.
This makes them different from people from the other territories.
If they wanted to become citizens, they would have to undergo a naturalization process.
There's also some restrictions on federal programs, so they don't have the same level of federal support as some of the other US territories do, but they do have their own constitution.
They are able to self-govern in a lot of instances and they're also able to serve in the United States military.
So if they wanted to serve in the military, they could also use that as a way to become a citizen.
The population of American Samoa is about 45,000, so it is relatively small.
However, I would say there is a lot of cultural impact here in the United States from American Samoa.
There are a lot of famous Samoans here in the United States and there are a lot of people who come from Samoa to the US to play football.
And when I talk about football, I am not talking about what other countries call football, which is what we call soccer here in the US.
I am talking about American football.
And in the US, there is the NFL, which stands for the National Football League.
There are a lot of players who came from Samoa or who are of Samoan descent.
I can say personally from my experience when I was at college, In my university's football program there were of course a lot of people who were of Samoan descent, who had Samoan heritage.
So that really speaks to the cultural impact.
There was a really strong history of having Samoans in the football program.
So, even though there's only 47000 people who live in American Samoa, they definitely have a big impact here in the United States.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope you learned something about these US territories.
Please leave a comment and let me know if you knew that these were US territories before listening to this episode or if this is the first you've heard about it.
Like I said, a lot of people in the United States get a little bit confused about this topic, so it's completely normal to not have known beforehand.
And I really hope that this episode maybe gave you some new information.
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