Last Thursday, the House passed a bill that would allow Puerto Rico to vote on whether to become the 51st state, become independent, or go independent while keeping some U.S. affiliations. The bill also includes procedures for each outcome of the vote along with resources for a voter education campaign. It passed in the House with a vote of 233 to 191, with 217 Democrats and 16 Republicans voting in favor of the measure. It does not look like it will pass in the Senate.

Over 10 years ago, the House brought up a similar bill, but this time around the language would require the federal government to accept whatever decision Puerto Rico makes.

“For far too long, the residents of Puerto Rico—over 3 million U.S. citizens—have been deprived of the opportunity to determine their own political future and have not received the full rights and benefits of their citizenship because they reside in a U.S. territory,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and the bill’s 63 co-sponsors wrote. “H.R. 8393 would take a historic step towards righting this wrong by establishing a process to ascertain the will of the voters of Puerto Rico.”

There have been seven referendums voted on in Puerto Rico over the years that usually received low voter turnout and were not legally binding. In the last referendum in 2020, 53 percent of people voted to make Puerto Rico a state.

Puerto Ricans are not eligible for some federal programs and usually do not pay federal income tax. However, they are still eligible for the draft. About 40 percent of Puerto Ricans live either at or below the poverty line.

“Time’s up on pondering the political and economic consequences of Puerto Rican statehood, let alone being opposed to it,” wrote Christina Ponsa-Krau, a Columbia law professor who specializes in American territorial expansion, in an essay for the New York Times. “You don’t annex a place, make it your colony for nearly a century and a quarter, and then reject its people’s vote for statehood.”

Puerto Rico became an American territory in 1898. Puerto Ricans were granted United States citizenship in 1917, but they cannot vote in presidential elections and do not have representatives in Congress. The population today is about three million people.

Most Republicans are against the House bill, saying the referendum does not give the option to keep the status quo and that it is being used as a distraction with the possible government shutdown that would have occurred if a budget agreement could not be reached.

Pablo José Hernández Rivera, an attorney in Puerto Rico, says this bill will be inconsequential, just like the others.

“We Puerto Ricans are tired of the fact that the New Progressive Party has spent 28 years in Washington spending resources on sterile and undemocratic status projects,” he said.

Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner and representative in Congress, is excited about the bill.

“Many of us are not in agreement about how that future should be, but we all accept that the decision should belong to the people of Puerto Rico,” she said.

“At this point in time I’m not, you know, interested in going down that road,” Texas Republican Representative Chip Roy told Business Insider. “We didn’t have a debate about it, I haven’t been a part of any of the debates on this. They’re trying to jam this through right before Christmas.”

If the Senate does not vote on the bill by the end of the month, the legislation will expire. Currently, the Senate is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, and 60 votes are needed to beat the filibuster. The House in 2023 will be majority Republican, so it is not likely that the Puerto Rico bill would be introduced again.

“This has not been an easy fight. We still have work to do,” Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party said. “Our quest to decolonize Puerto Rico is a civil rights issue.”