What a hellhole. Just look at that. Source: Discover America
So, in summary: The United States has spent the last 117 years (and counting) ruling over five territories, with a total population rivaling Minnesota’s.
The people in these places pay taxes and serve in the military, where they die in combat at up to four times the rate of any state, and are expected to travel over 2,000 miles to the nearest VA hospital in Hawaii. Until 2009, some of them were expected to work like mules for $3 an hour for American corporations, all without voting for anything much beyond the local school board.
In exchange for this sacrifice, American Samoans are rewarded with a special passport, which goes out of its way to insult them on the last page, where it notes in bold text that the holder is not a citizen, to which is added the injury of being fired when their second-class citizenship is discovered by an employer. And all because federal judges who’ve been dead since World War I were concerned about “alien races” mucking up Anglo-Saxon law.
