George Miller: “This amendment is about should at the end of this process the people of Puerto Rico decide to choose statehood as an…”

“This amendment is about should at the end of this process the people of Puerto Rico decide to choose statehood as an option and a condition under which they want to live, the language in the Burton substitute says they will be treated the same as any other State. They will be treated the same as the citizens of Nebraska or California or New York or Florida or Louisiana or anywhere else. If this Congress should decide that English is the official language of this country and wants to add a lot of requirements about that at some future date, if Puerto Rico is a State, Puerto Rico will live under those requirements the same as the citizens of any other State. If Puerto Rico petitions to become a State, and we agree to that, and they vote for that and we vote for that, they are petitioning to become a State on coequal terms of every other citizen of every other State. The Solomon amendment goes beyond that. It goes beyond that to require, require, that the communications be only in English and people can only communicate with the Federal Government in English, far beyond what is required today in any law that we have.”