226 Nylund The United States government next addressed the status of Puerto Rico one year later, when Congress enacted the Organic (‘Foraker’) Act of 1900, establishing that the inhabitants of Puerto Rico ‘shall be deemed and held to be citizens of Puerto Rico.’13 This sui generis label was not defined and was thus subject to multiple interpretations,14 and as will be discussed below, the lack of clarity has had serious legal ramifications. The debate in Congress regarding the Foraker Act indicated that legislators in the majority were not willing to grant citizenship to the inhabitants of newly acquired territories due to racism and concerns about these territories’ ‘level of civilization’.15 (While it is argued below that this particular discriminatory withholding of citizenship did not result in de jure statelessness, it is important to emphasize that discrimination against a specific population based on race or ethnicity is a root cause of statelessness in several regions of the world today.) As a result of the Foraker Act, Puerto Rican residents remained nationals of the United States, but citizens of Puerto Rico. This middle-of-the-road status was later solidified by the Supreme Court in the so-called Insular cases concerning the status of territories acquired by the US in the Spanish-American War, and in Gonzales v US, which established that residents of Puerto Rico were ‘noncitizen nationals’.16 It was not until the US Congress passed the Jones Act in 1917 that Puerto Ricans gained US citizenship17 (although the fact that the granting of 13 14 15 16 17 Organic Act, Ch 191, 31 Stat 77 (1900) (Foraker Act) s 7 (emphasis added). See Christina Duffy Burnett, ‘“They Say I Am Not An American (…) “: The Noncitizen National and the Law of American Empire’(Opinio Juris, 1 July 2008) <http://opiniojuris .org/2008/07/01/they-say-i-am-not-an-american-the-noncitizen-national-and-the-law-of -american-empire/> accessed 7 July 2013. Huot Calderón (n 11) 327-328. Congress expressed concern that granting US citizenship to Puerto Rico would set a precedent with respect to the Philippines, which was also acquired at the end of the Spanish-American War. 192 US 1, 13 (1904) (citizens of Puerto Rico were neither United States citizens nor aliens). See also 77 FAM 1120 (n 9) 3. Ch 145, s 5, 39 Stat 951, 953 (1917); 77 FAM 1120 (n 9) 9. A 1934 statute clarified that US citizenship should only be conferred on persons born in Puerto Rico who would otherwise be stateless; thus, acquisition of a foreign nationality in any manner, including by automatic operation of foreign law, would keep a person born in Puerto Rico from benefiting from US citizenship. However, the 1940 Citizenship Act broadened the provisions so that the law was not only aimed at preventing statelessness but rather extended US citizenship to all persons born on the island, regardless of whether they had a second nationality. 77 FAM 1120 (n 9) 11-12. tilburg law review 19 (2014) 223-235