51st state

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The 51st state in American political discourse refers to the concept of granting statehood to one of the United States' territories, splitting one or more of the existing states up to form a new state, admitting another country, or granting statehood to the District of Columbia, thereby increasing the number of states in the Union from 50 to 51; a new state has not been admitted since Hawaii in the summer of 1959. Before that, the last state was Alaska, a few months before Hawaii, and then Arizona in 1912. There are two active statehood movements in the United States, one is the Federal District and the other the island of Puerto Rico. The four other U.S. territories—Guam, the Northern Marianas, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands—explicitly chose territory status, and while they might explore that possibility, they don't have active statehood movements. The latter part of this article is more about the use of the term 51st State as a phrase, not an actual political process.

Voters in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have both voted for statehood in referendums.^[1][2][3] As statehood candidates, their admission to the Union requires congressional approval.^[4] American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the United States Virgin Islands are other U.S. territories that could potentially become U.S. states.^[5] However, D.C. and Puerto Rico are the only ones with particularly active statehood movements. Guam voted in the 1980s against being a state, and the Northern Marianas joined the USA in 1986 as a Commonwealth; likewise, American Samoa has no statehood movement.

There are several different ways a 51st State could be created. Some examples include granting a U.S. territory Statehood (as happened with Alaska), a State could be split (Kentucky was created this way), or another republic could be annexed (Vermont for example). Finally, the Federal District may be able to be made into a State, though the legality of this is debated.

The phrase can be used in a positive sense, meaning that a region or territory is so aligned, supportive, and conducive with the United States that it is like a U.S. state, or in a pejorative sense, meaning an area or region is under excessive American cultural or military influence or control. People who believe their local or national culture has become too Americanized sometimes use the term in reference to their own countries.^[6] Before Alaska and Hawaii became states of the United States in 1959, the equivalent expression was "the 49th state".