(BILL 13-0570)
 No. 4462

 (Approved August 5, 1980)

 To Create the Virgin Islands Status Commission To Negotiate the Relationship
of the Virgin Islands of the United States of America, To Provide for Popular Ratification
of a Territorial-Federal Relationship, and for Related Purposes.

 WHEREAS the Virgin Islands has been an unincorporated territory of the United
States of America since its purchase in the convention entered into by His Majesty, the
King of Denmark, and the United States on August 4, 1916; and

 WHEREAS the people of the Virgin Islands have never determined by election
or otherwise the scope of territorial-federal relations as have other United States
territories such as the Northern Marianas and Puerto Rico; and

 WHEREAS the Government of the United States, by Public Law 94-584,
enacted October 21, 1976, authorized the people of the Virgin Islands to call
constitutional conventions to provide greater autonomy in matters of local self-
government, but these conventions are restricted to matters "within the existing
territorial-federal relationship"; and

 WHEREAS the President of the United States stated on February 14, 1980: "If
the people of any of the territories wish to modify their current political status, they
should express their aspirations to the Secretary of the Interior through their elected
leaders..."; and

 WHEREAS President Carter has on numerous occasions acknowledged the
 responsibilities and obligations of the United States under the charter of the United
 Nations to foster greater self-government and self-determination for the people of the
 Virgin Islands by submitting annual reports to the world body and permitting the
 Decolonization Committee to send a visiting mission to the Territory in 1977; and

 WHEREAS several influential members of Congress have invited the Virgin
 Islands, apart from the constitutional process, to consider and define the territorial-
 federal relationship most desirable for the Virgin Islands; and

 WHEREAS unilateral Federal decisions affecting the basic self-governing
 abilities of the people of the Virgin Islands demonstrate the serious limitations imposed
 by the United States on local self-determination of political, economic and social
 development of the Territory; and

 WHEREAS laws of general applicability to the states of the United States which
 are extended to the Territory of the Virgin Islands are often disruptive of the social,