American settlement and renewed investor interest in Puerto Rico has led some political sectors to view the crisis as an opportunity to advocate for the island’s full incorporation to the United States as a state. To this group, incorporation appears viable in part because the growth of white settlers in US territories has been a key factor in the granting of statehood to other territories in the past. Historically, there have been at least two conditions for the incorporation of territories as states of the union: that the territory appears as sufficiently valuable to the nation and that it achieves a local white majority or, at least, white hegemony. This was the case of several territories with majority-Mexican populations such as New Mexico and Arizona, and also the case with Hawai’i and Alaska. Yet, this is a misreading of the current political juncture.