Could Puerto Rico become part of a US state? Could Puerto Rico become part of a US state? I realise it has long been proposed as a 51st state, but that seems unlikely. So how about this alternative?
Yes. This would require the consent of Congress and the accepting U.S. state, but Puerto Rico's consent would not be constitutionally required (although it would be prudent to obtain and probably would be obtained as a matter of custom and fairness). New York States has floated the possibility of annexing Puerto Rico since it is the single most concentrated destination of Puerto Rican migration to the mainland historically and has a large and politically well organized Puerto Rican community and would favor the expansion of Democratic political party power that this annexation would entail. Contiguity is less of a concern for Puerto Rico since it is an island in any case. Florida would be another natural candidate, but its conservative/purple political makeup would probably oppose such an annexation even though geographically it would be a more natural annexing state. In a similar vein, there have been proposals to annex all of the District of Columbia except the federal mall to Maryland subject to the same formal requirements. Either annexation would be a compromise. It would give these territories full statehood status and full representation in the U.S. House but would deny Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, respective, their own two seats in the U.S. Senate which would favor Democrats more than mere annexation would.
Your caveat about not being a national of either country is a bit puzzling, because your question is about acquiring the countries' nationality, which implies as a matter of course that you do not presently have either nationality. After acquiring each country's nationality, of course, you will be a national of that country, so by the time you are a dual citizen of Italy and the US, it will no longer be true that you are not a national of either country. In other words, it's analogous to asking "Will I be able to get a driver's license after I learn how to drive? The problem is that I don't have a driver's license." US law does not require you to renounce Italian citizenship if you naturalize as a US citizen. I don't know Italian law on the matter very well, but the relevant section in Wikipedia says, without citations, that naturalizing elsewhere does not cause loss of Italian citizenship. Assuming that is true, and that neither country makes any relevant changes in its nationality law, then the answer to your question is yes: you can be a dual citizen of both Italy and the United States. (In fact, you may at that point hold three or more citizenships if your current country or countries of citizenship does not or do not have laws causing you to lose citizenship when you naturalize in Italy or the US.)
Any country can certainly decide who it should grant citizenship status to. There is no international rule that I know of requiring that the recipient be currently a resident of the country granting citizenship. Any country may issue passports to its citizens.
Nothing will happen. Wait for the 2030 census and January 3rd 2033. Representatives are only recalculated after each census. The last census and recalculation was 2020. So no ordinary recalculation will happen till 2030. It's unclear if there could be an extra census, which then might lead to redistricting - the only rules (in the constitution) I can find are, that a census has to happen every 10 years. Current laws are, that it happens every 10 years. It's up to politics to introduce laws to allow an extra census, but to make it that obvious that it is needed, there needs to be an exodus/death toll of the scale of the black death in Europe (one in 4 dies/moves) or a total depopulation of an area like New York City. Which has 8 million inhabitants, something like 10 districts, and is growing. Back in 1918 H1N1 killed between 2% and 10% of those that got it and in total about 675,000 (of 103.2 million) in the US, mainly in cities that did lag in their reaction to the fall/winter wave in 1918. As three (not fully) random examples: Philadelphia lost 16000 for something around 941 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants (the town had about 1.7 million inhabitants at the time), LA had a death toll of only 494 per 100,000, all of Nebraska lost between 2800 and 7500 people on a population of 1.3 million - for - for between 200 and 580 deaths per 100,000. Yet despite this very disparate impact it barely impacted the 1920 census. Not even the hurricane Katrina, which pretty much wiped out New Orleans, did not result in an extra census and restructuring - so it is very unlikely to happen. On the other hand, there is a formula for assigning representatives. We use the same setup since the 1940 census. Legal basis? 2 USC §2b dictates each state gets at least one: Each State shall be entitled, in the Seventy-eighth and in each Congress thereafter until the taking effect of a reapportionment under a subsequent statute or section 2a of this title, to the number of Representatives shown in the statement transmitted to the Congress on January 8, 1941, based upon the method known as the method of equal proportions, no State to receive less than one Member. 2 USC §2c dictates how many representative districts exist and how many representatives it will have: In each State entitled in the Ninety-first Congress [1969] or in any subsequent Congress thereafter to more than one Representative under an apportionment made pursuant to the provisions of section 2a(a) of this title, there shall be established by law a number of districts equal to the number of Representatives to which such State is so entitled, and Representatives shall be elected only from districts so established, no district to elect more than one Representative (except that a State which is entitled to more than one Representative and which has in all previous elections elected its Representatives at Large may elect its Representatives at Large to the Ninety-first Congress). The Redistricting is State-Law - and there are roughly 5 types how it's done. So, one representative per district. One district per representative. District borders are to be redrawn based on the decennial census as demanded in Art. 1 §2 - where it is called Enumeration: The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; [provisional numbers] When will redistricting take effect? Redistricting lags one term behind, and it will not fire or remove a representative from office, whose district is scheduled to vanish - or elect new people. That's because redistricting on the state level can only happen after the reapportionment of the seats has been handed out by the clerk of the House of representatives. Reapportionment has a deadline of 25th January the year after the census. That's after the house term starts. Since at that moment the districts are still in existence, the term of the current holder first needs to run out before the new districts take effect. So the district ceases to exist the same day they leave office on January 3rd. A good example would be New York: The 45th district was redistricted from the 43rd District and elected first for in 1944, and was redistricted back into the 43rd District after the 1950 census. It was last voted for in 1950, well before the results of the census were handed out and redistricting happened. So the district ceased to be the same day Daniel A. Reed left the office on January 3rd of 1953. The 28th Congressional District was established in 1823 and eliminated on January 3rd 2013 as a result of the 2010 census. The last election for its seat was - obviously - in 2010. As a result, any changes to the district map stemming from the 2020 census will take effect only on January 3rd 2023, and a massive depopulation showing in the 2030 census will have an effect only in the elections for the house that begins its term on January 3rd 2033.
with the new movement by some states to require voters to have identification to vote, and the fact that no state I know of provides free government issued ID (unless you are an employee) it seems that unless a state provided its residents with free access to state-issued ID, that requiring people to go pay for ID's needed to vote would be contrary to the Twenty-Fourth Amendment. This specific issue (which is much easier to address than the general question) has been litigated, and in some cases, it has been a successful argument. It is pretty much acknowledged now that requiring a fee for all documents required in order to have ID necessary to vote violates the 24th Amendment. But, the states that enacted these requirements knew that and tried to get around it by making at least one form of voter ID free, which prevents the statutes from being facially invalid. This isn't the end of the question, however: Voter ID laws, enacted in 11 states over the past two years, require voters to show a government-issued photo ID that the state will provide for free. But while the ID is free, the documents residents need to prove their identity in order to get that ID, such as a birth certificate, are not. Now, lots of people already have documents like birth certificates that were purchased by their parents at their birth and are now available to them for free. But, that isn't always the case. This raises the question of whether there is an "as applied" violation of the 24th Amendment in the cases of someone who can't prove their entitlement to compliant voter ID without paying for it, and if so, what the proper remedy is for the violation. These issues are still being actively litigated and haven't been definitively resolved on a national basis in all circumstances.
One approach is to sue the (state) government, to see if the state or US Supreme Courts agree. This is probably the most complicated way to get what you want, because it involves a lot of legal arguing, but you don't need a lot of people to agree with you, you just need the right people agreeing with you. Another approach is to change the relevant state statute (repeal, reword, add another); or, you could change the state's Constitution. Changes could either come via the legislature, or via the people. The role of the people, in the case of a legislative change, is to politically persuade the government to do what you want. Via the initiative process you can eliminate the government-approval step by writing the desired change, then it gets voted on in an election if it qualifies (gets the necessary number of valid signatures: 8% of the last gubernatorial election). An example is Prop 1a (1966), which brought about a number of constitutional changes. There is in fact a distinction between an amendment and a revision, the latter being more extensive (Prop 1a was a large-scale revision). An example of a statutory change is this, Prop 12 (2018), which passed. Instead of collecting signatures, one can persuade a majority of the legislature, but this still requires voter approval. The easiest path for changing the law is for the people to persuade the legislature, because the legislature has the power to change / add laws. Even then, some legislative acts have to also be submitted to popular vote for (dis)approval, either bond measures or amendments to previous voter initiatives.
There are a number of issues here. The question mentions: Taxes, which I presume must be authorized and regulated by the US Constitution, but I don't know the details Not exactly. The states existed before the Federal government. They are not created by the Federal Constitution, nor authorized by it. A number of restrictions on state powers and actions are specified by the Federal Constitution, and a number of others are imposed by Federal law. (the Federal courts have found implied restrictions beyond the explicitly stated ones.) But there is no Federal provision granting states the power to impose taxes, only restrictions on that pre-existing power. States cannot impose taxes so as to violate rights federally guaranteed, or to place unreasonable burdens on the exercise of those rights. For example, states cannot impose different taxes or tax rates on a racial basis. States cannot impose different taxes on residents of other states temporarily present in, or doing business in the state. States cannot impose different taxes on people newly moved there from other states, compared to long-established residents. State taxes must not violate the Equal Protection clause. However, states may choose the type and amount of taxes to impose. They can use sales tax, VAT tax, property tax, income tax, excise tax, flat tax, or any combination that their legislatures pass. Different taxes may be imposed on different professions or kinds of businesses. Does the US Constitution guarantee all citizens have the natural right to conduct their own business affairs? Not as such, no. The Due Process and Equal Protection clauses limit to some extent the ability of a state to prohibit a particular business on a whim. But when a state asserts that a particular business is harmful, and demonstrates a plausible basis for that view, so that the law passes "Rational basis" review, the state can prohibit it, or heavily regulate it, or license it. If so, does a citizen lose the right to legally own and operate a business if they cannot afford requisite state or local business license fees? A state may require a license to engage in a particular occupation, and may require a fee, one-time or recurring, high or low, for that license. In addition, a tax may be imposed on those in a particular business or profession, which is not imposed on other kinds of business. For example, in many states, lawyers must pay an annual license fee, or they are not allowed to practice. So must many other regulated professions, such as hairstylist. One who cannot afford the fee may not engage in the business or profession. The state may waive or reduce fees for those too poor to afford them, but need not do so, and many states do not so so. Similarly, the state may charge a fee for a driver's license, and one who cannot pay it may not legally drive. Likewise, does a citizen lose the right to utilize the court system to petition for a redress of grievances, if they cannot afford the requisite court fees? Many states have provisions waiving or lowering court fees for those who cannot afford them, but in most cases this is applied only in severe cases, say where a person would have to go without food to afford court fees. There have been a few federal cases requiring fee waivers for those who cannot afford court fees, mostly in connection with criminal defendants. There is not currently a general federal rule requiring court access for those who cannot afford court fees. Perhaps there should be. A case could be made that Equal Protection requires this, but Federal Courts have not so held. Federal courts have held that holding people in jail or prison because they truly cannot afford fines, bail, or court fees is an unconstitutional denial of Equal Protection. But states need not waive such fees; they can be deferred and charged should the person earn enough money to (just barely) afford them. Even this rule is not yet invariably enforced, and many state courts routinely ignore it. By the way "petition for a redress of grievances" doe snot normally refer to bringing a court case, but to asking a legislature to change a law, or asking an administrator or executive to exercise permitted discretion in a particular way. And lastly, if a citizen is convicted of a crime or infraction, and the sentence requires the convict to utilize government services (e.g. prison services, probation services, registration services, etc.); under the US Constitution, can state government agencies providing these services legally require the convict to pay fees for these services (e.g. prison service fees, probation service fees, registration service fees), if these fees were not explicitly included in the sentence as fines? Yes it can impose such fees, but usually only when neither the convict nor his or her dependents will be impoverished by such fees, as I understand it. If a state attempts to pass or enforce state legislation dictating such fees, should this legislation generally be struck down as unconstitutional? Such laws will not be held unconstitutional by US Federal courts under the Federal Constitution, unless they are found to violate Equal Protection, Due Process, or other specifically imposed restrictions on the state. For example, fees which were in practice imposed on people of one religion, but not those of another, would be struck down. But a fee imposed on everyone will not usually be overturned. "The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to steal bread from shops, beg in the streets, and sleep under bridges." -Anatole France
Sure, but Qatar is not in the jurisdiction of the ECHR! For the ECHR to apply in a jurisdiction, Qatar would need to have signed it or be in the EU or at least have been in it. It never has been. In fact, not even Den Haque would have power over Qatar unless they allowed it to - and that court rules on matters of war crimes... Qatar does not guarantee the same rights you might be familiar with from most western countries. In fact, not even all western countries are the same. In America, you can use the Sieg Heil gesture, in Germany, you can end in jail for it.. Same for Propaganda materials.