1. It doesn’t help when the American Samoan government doesn’t support its own natives living int he US.

2. I would think that the American Samoans would not have to pay federal or state income taxes with this ruling. The whole opinion is very sad.

3. It seems like the a lot of American Samoa’s political and personal status issues are tied up with a fear among their political establishment that citizenship, statehood or even incorporation would put their communal property and traditional governance systems at risk. It doesn’t seem like those are actually insurmountable obstacles, but no one’s putting forward a solution to let them have that cake and it eat it too.

4. They should count as citizens.

5. @Fred

   Micronesia was part of the Pacific Trust Territory, until about 1990. Unlike the Northern Marianas, the Micronesians chose to become an associated state, rather than a commonwealth, precisely because they didn’t want their local tribal customs subjected to federal court scrutiny.

   Perhaps American Samoa would be happier as an associated state, like Micronesia. Anyway, Congress has the power to grant citizenship to American Somoans, which they have done for all other current territories. IMO, at the least Congress should grant US citizenship to American Somoans who have become residents of the incorporated US. I don’t thing their small numbers would flip any federal election anywhere.

   Congress never granted blank US citizenship to residents of the Philippines for the entire period that that country was a US territory (1898-1946). Perhaps some lawyers are afraid that if the Supreme Court overturns the precedents of the Insular Cases, then all Filipinos who lived in the Philippines during that time would be retroactively recognized as US citizens.

6. How many AS folks have applied to be naturalized USA Citizens ???

7. WZ –

   ANY 1-9-8 UNCON *titles of nobility* lurking in USA colonies ???

8. @Walter
   I read their concerns oft-repeated, but it doesn’t seem to me they can’t be addressed. My understanding is that some Native American tribes have hereditary chiefs, though when I tried to research this subject all I found was that statement made in passing without further detail.

   We also have mainland examples of communal property. There was this recent editorial illustrating the case of the Gullah:

   http://www.thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/548809-fema-dont-drive-the-gullah-geechee-from-their-land

   I’ll note that article is largely about the struggle to maintain that status against state law and in a climate of poor documentation, but I’m only trying to show that precedents exist in law for these arrangements already. If we were trying to create such an arrangement out of whole cloth, we could come up with something based on trusts and covenants.

   So I feel like with some legislative effort their traditional practices could be reconciled with citizenship or statehood. Instead the subject is dismissed as a permanent quagmire.

   A decision overturning the insular cases probably could lead to the exact result you’re indicating for the Phillipines.

9. How much tribal communism in mainland American Indian tribes — pre-1492 and since 1890 — bare survival of ANY American Indians after about 400 years of genocides ???

   See recent OK SCOTUS op.
   —-
   PR
   APPV
   TOTSOP

10. @ Fred:

    Perhaps if Native American Samoans, Native Hawaiians, and Chamorros of Guam were recognized as federal tribes, they could keep their tribal customs and communal land.

11. That’s my thinking as well. There have been some efforts to create a Native Hawaiian tribe over the last 20 years.

12. Good idea.

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