Puerto Rican citizenship
On April 12, 1900, the United States Congress enacted the Foraker Act of 1900, which replaced the governing military regime in Puerto Rico with a civil form of government. Section VII of this act created a Puerto Rican citizenship for the residents "born in Puerto Rico and, therefore, subject to its jurisdiction." The Puerto Rican citizenship replaced the Spanish citizenship that Puerto Ricans held at the time in 1898. Such Puerto Rican citizenship was granted by Spain in 1897. This citizenship was reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court in 1904 by its ruling in which denied that Puerto Ricans were United States citizens and labeled them as noncitizen nationals. In a 1914 letter of refusal to the offer of U.S. citizenship and addressed to both the President of the United States and the U.S. Congress, the Puerto Rico House of Delegates stated ""We, Porto Ricans, Spanish-Americans, of Latin soul ... are satisfied with our own beloved Porto Rican citizenship, and proud to have been born and brethren in our own motherland."" The official 1916 Report by the American colonial governor of Puerto Rico to the U.S. Secretary of War (the former name for the Department of Defense), addresses both citizenships, the Puerto Rican citizenship and United States citizenship, in the context of the issuance of passports, further evidencing that the Puerto Rican citizenship did not disappear when the Americans took over the island in 1898.
Politics of Puerto Rico
Both the Puerto Rican Independence Party and the New Progressive Party outright reject the status quo that permits disfranchisement. The remaining political organization, the Popular Democratic Party, is less active in its opposition of this case of disfranchisement but has officially stated that it favors fixing the remaining "deficits of democracy" that the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations have publicly recognized in writing through Presidential Task Force Reports.
On October 25, 2006, the Puerto Rico State Department conferred a certificate of Puerto Rican citizenship on Juan Mari Brás. The Puerto Rican citizenship was first legislated by the U.S. Congress in Article 7 of the Foraker Act of 1900 and recognized by the Puerto Rico constitution. The certificate of citizenship is not automatically conferred, and it must be requested. The certificates of Puerto Rican citizenship are issued to any persons born on the island as well as to those born outside of the island that have at least one parent who was born on the island. Any U.S. citizen with at least one year of residence on the island is also eligible for the official citizenship certificate. The certificate is not a valid travel document. Effectively, it is no more legally significant than a certificate of birth or residency.
Puerto Rico may not conclude treaties with other sovereign states, although it does belong to some international bodies such as:As a non-sovereign country, Puerto Rico hosts no embassies. However, like most states of the United States, it does host Consulates from several countries, mainly from the Western Hemisphere and Europe. While the Papal Nuncio in Washington, D.C. serves as the Vatican State's ambassador to the U.S. and the ecclesiastical liaison to the American Roman Catholic Church, the Holy See has designated the Papal Nuncio in the Dominican Republic as the ecclesiastical liaison to the Roman Catholic Church in Puerto Rico.