In April, GovTrack Insider wrote about the New Columbia Admission Act, a bill that would make the District of Columbia the 51st state. But that’s not the only bill in this Congress that would create a new state. What about Puerto Rico?

The Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Process Act, H.R. 727, would do just that. The bill was introduced by Pedro Pierluisi (D-PR), the island’s delegate to Congress who can introduce, cosponsor, and weigh in on bills, but cannot cast a vote.

What the bill does

H.R. 727 would set the first-ever federally-sponsored vote in Puerto Rico in 2017 on whether the territory should become a state. A locally-sponsored nonbinding referendum on the same question in 2012 received overwhelming approval in favor of statehood: 61 percent for statehood, 33 percent for the status quo, and 6 percent for independence.

If a majority of Puerto Rican voters again favor statehood in this federally-sponsored vote, the bill would allow Puerto Ricans to vote for President and Vice President in 2020, after which they would be admitted as a state in January 2021, with full congressional representation.

What supporters say

Supporters argue that Puerto Ricans — who are U.S. citizens, pay most federal taxes, and can be drafted into the U.S. military — are long past time to fully transition from their quasi-statehood status as a U.S. territory. They also note that it’s what Puerto Ricans themselves seem to want.

“This bill is modeled on the legislation enacted by Congress with respect to Alaska and Hawaii, the only territories to become states within the last 100 years. When Alaska and Hawaii were territories, they each held votes — sponsored by the local government — in which voters expressed a desire for statehood. This is precisely what occurred in Puerto Rico in November 2012,” lead sponsor Pierluisi said in a press release.

“Ultimately, Congress approved an admission act for Alaska in July 1958 and an admission act for Hawaii in March 1959. Those acts of Congress provided for admission to occur once a majority of voters affirmed in a federally-sponsored vote that they desired statehood.”

Puerto Rico had 3.47 million residents in 2015, which is greater than the population of 21 states. (Washington, D.C. has a population about one-fifth that size, at about 658 thousand, which is greater than the population of two states, Wyoming and Vermont.)

What opponents say

Opponents argue that it’s perfectly acceptable for Puerto Rico to remain as a territory, plus there are fears among Republicans that it would provide a reliably and overwhelmingly Democratic state. (A similar argument contributes to GOP opposition to the admission of the District of Columbia as a state.)

One perhaps-surprising opponent of statehood is Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro García Padilla — a Democrat, no less. He defended his position largely on economic grounds, telling CNN Español, “I do not believe in statehood. That would be disastrous for the economy of Puerto Rico. It would turn Puerto Rico into a ghetto, a entire country turned into a Latin American ghetto… Puerto Rico has a different tax status, because it is not a state. It would then lose this competitive advantage and would make Puerto Rico worse off.”

Odds of passage

Introduced in February 2015, the bill has attracted 110 cosponsors: 95 Democrats, 14 Republicans, and one Independent (the Northern Mariana Islands’s delegate Gregoria Sablan). It has not yet received a vote in the House Natural Resources Committee.

No new state has been admitted since Hawaii in 1959.

This article was written by GovTrack Insider staff writer Jesse Rifkin.