Could the U.S. actually make Canada a 51st state? How the process works

U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested making Canada the 51st state, but there's several steps that would need to occur for that to happen.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said Canada should be the 51st U.S. state as he proposes to erase the 5,525-mile-long border that separates the two countries. The very notion is ludicrous to Canadians and the hurdles to transforming it into a state are sky high.

But in Trump’s thinking, the traditional Lower 48 states would become the contiguous 50 as the Canadian territory between the U.S. mainland and Alaska disappears, leaving Hawaii as the only non-continental state.

“If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100% certain that they’d become a state,” Trump said recently.

Canada at first reacted as though Trump must be joking, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said flatly his country would never be the 51st state. Trudeau more recently suggested behind closed doors that Trump’s sustained annexation calls may not be just light talk and appear to be “a real thing.”

Here’s what it would take to transform Canada from a nation to a state:

Congress has to approve accepting a new state.

It takes only a House majority, but Senate filibuster rules require a minimum of 60 votes in the 100-member chamber to bring a bill to the floor — an insurmountable threshold for all kinds of key legislation.

The Constitution’s Admissions Clause, Article IV, Section 3, states: “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”