Is it time for President Donald Trump and the U.S. Congress to cut loose the unincorporated USA territory of Puerto Rico? Is it time to say goodbye and let them have their own sovereign island nation independent from the USA?

Hurricane season 2018 just started and some 10,000 families in back woods Puerto Rico are still without electrical power despite 10-months of restoration efforts following the near complete devastation from Hurricane Maria last September that left at least 500,000 homes and businesses destroyed. The estimated population of Puerto Rico in 2017 before Hurricane Maria was about 3.3-million residents, but now the actual population of this island nation is unknown – many have left.

The Puerto Rican government cannot even agree on how many deaths were attributed to the storm. Some say it was 64 deaths, while a recent study by Harvard University claims 4,600 deaths. That’s a pretty big difference.

Considering the behavior of Puerto Rico’s governor, the mayor of San Juan and countless local officials from one end of Puerto Rico to the other after the near category-5 hurricane hit, it is apparent that corruption is rampant and far beyond the control of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that has tirelessly attempted to restore the island back to normal.

Since 1899 Puerto Rico has been a drain on the USA and it’s time to set them free to be responsible for their self-inflicted actions, inactions or corruption. Every few years Puerto Rico votes for USA statehood, but they do not deserve it. None of the votes were binding so the issue of statehood or independence for Puerto Rico rages on.

Residents of Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens and they can move freely back and forth from the USA mainland. They do not have a voting member of the U.S. Congress and they do not vote in national elections, plus they do not pay federal income taxes on money they earn in their homeland. They have been between a rock and a hard place for long enough.

They deserve to be their own sovereign nation like many other tropical countries in the greater Caribbean and answer to their own voters – now they answer only to the American taxpayers that cannot stop the flow of money and aid to Puerto Rico. President Trump and the U.S. Congress can and should cut them off. Finish the power restoration and move out.

All the USA gets from Puerto Rico is bills. Their national debt is estimated to be about $73-billion and they already declared bankruptcy long before Hurricane Maria. They contribute nothing to the USA. Under USA law, individual states cannot declare bankruptcy so if they were made the 51st state – guess who inherits that $73-billion in debt?

Their tax practices have allowed tax shelters called “possessions corporations” for many USA companies that moved to Puerto Rico decades ago. This designation later changed as re-incorporations were filed under “controlled foreign corporations” which do not contribute tax revenues to the USA’s federal treasury which means the American taxpayers are still getting ripped off by Puerto Rico and their tax laws.

The corporate survivors in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria are still there and dug in, still yet costing the USA more in lost tax revenue year after year. Nobody does anything to stop it. This is why President Trump and the U.S. Congress should step in and stop the bottomless pit from getting any deeper.

The local economy of Puerto Rica is overwhelmed with problems as more than 100,000 residents have fled to Florida and elsewhere – but that exact number remains unknown. All of these challenges have given rise to further debate about it becoming the 51st state, remain a commonwealth as it is now or go independent and work out their myriad of complications by themselves. Grant them independence and let them apply annually for U.S. Foreign Aid that can be monitored and documented.

Puerto Rico’s once thriving tourist industry is shattered. Other than FEMA representatives, journalists and private contractors hired to help in recovery very few normal tourists and families are booking this once beautiful, tropical island like in the past. There are many more places to go for that tropical vacation experience — for example family-friendly Costa Rica, Jamaica or the Bahamas.

Some say it would be cruel to turn over Puerto Rico to the people of Puerto Rico in their time of need, but others say the opposite. This debate is nowhere near over, but in President Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda there is no room for Puerto Rico to continue on as they have in the past. It’s time to cut bait. Let them determine their own future and in the long-run it would be better for their national pride to have formed their own independent government and win their struggles instead of accepting endless, expensive handouts from the USA that end up at the muddy bottom of Lake Corruption in downtown San Juan.