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
In 1917 "Puerto Ricans were collectively made U.S. citizens" via the Jones–Shafroth Act. All persons born in Puerto Rico after 1941 are considered natural-born citizens of the United States, one of the constitutional requirements to be President of the United States. In addition, this is reiterated by an April 2000 CRS report by the Congressional Research Service, this report asserts that citizens born in Puerto Rico, are legally defined as natural born citizens and are, therefore, also eligible to be elected President of the United States. However, according to a former edition of the US Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual, "the fact that someone is a natural born citizen pursuant to a statute does not necessarily imply that he or she is such a citizen for Constitutional purposes."