Puerto Rican citizenship
In 1952, upon U.S. Congress approving the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, also reaffirmed that Puerto Rican citizenship continued in full force. This was further reaffirmed in 2006 while the U.S. Senate probed into the President's Task Force on Puerto Rico's status. In 1953, U.S Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., in a memorandum sent to the United Nations, recognized that "the people of Puerto Rico continue to be citizens of the United States as well as of Puerto Rico."
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.