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Brenda Nazario and her son Fernando (not pictured) both recently moved to Philadelphia for work. Tom Gralish/Staff
Photographer
Michael Matza, Inquirer Staff Writer
LAST UPDATED: Monday, November 9, 2015, 1:08 AM
Latest News Video
Brenda Nazario was drowning.
The 58-year-old mother of three and resident of Puerto Rico's
port of Ponce had worked almost two decades as a
government social worker but earned less than $800 a month.
Her husband, a marina manager, lost half his pay in a publicsector cutback. The couple declared bankruptcy last year.
WEATHER
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TRAFFIC
So nine months ago, Nazario moved to
Philadelphia for a job with Asociación
Puertorriqueños en Marcha, the 45-year-old multiservice
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center on North Ninth Street.
Now she spends her days helping clients in Juniata and
Feltonville. She hopes her husband, Elizer Maldonado, will
leave the island of 3.5 million and join her here in the spring.
Her son Joshua, 20, already lives with her and works in a
warehouse. When her daughter, Nadja, 22, finishes her
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studies in criminology, Nazario said, she plans to join Puerto
Rico's growing diaspora, too. Nazario's elder son, Fernando,
35, who was a chef at an assisted-living home in Puerto Rico,
arrived in Philadelphia last week and got a job at the same
warehouse as his half-brother.
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The family reflects the island's largest wave of migration in
decades - with good reason. Unemployment is at 12 percent,
the poverty rate at 45 percent, the median household income
below $20,000.
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"Puerto Rico is having such a hard time," Nazario said. "You
find people with advanced degrees working as cashiers. You
pay the bills and don't have enough left over for a movie."
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Puerto Ricans, who from birth are U.S. citizens, have
historically moved to the mainland in times of trouble, but this
latest wave of migration is desperate and accelerating.
Travel Deals
Because, unlike Nazario, the leaders of the hard-pressed
Caribbean island do not have the bankruptcy option.
That's because Puerto Rico, a former Spanish colony that the
United States claimed as a territory after a war with Spain in
1898, is neither state nor nation. Like Greece, it wants to
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restructure its payments to bondholders. Like Detroit, it wants
protection from creditors. Neither is possible with its current,
non-sovereign status.
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The Obama administration has warned of "harmful
consequences . . . on the island and beyond" if no solution is
found.
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History repeats itself
The immigration surge is most visible in Florida but also felt in
Philadelphia, home to America's second-largest Puerto Rican
population after New York City.
More than 192,000 people left Puerto Rico between 2010 and
the end of 2014. While there are no hard figures as to how
many came to live in Philadelphia, the U.S. government
estimates that 1,600 resettled here in the last year.
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Of more than 187,000 Latinos in the city, Puerto Ricans make
up about 121,000, according to the last census. Estimates
since 2010 put the number at 133,535.
The influx extends to other parts of Pennsylvania.
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Reading, a magnet for Puerto Ricans in Berks County, has a
growing population of about 60,000 Puerto Ricans, said
Michael Toledo, executive director of the city's Centro
Hispano multiservice center.
"We are seeing history repeat itself," he said, citing the "Great
Migration," that brought Puerto Ricans to harvest crops during
World War II and this 21st-century wave, which includes
highly educated migrants.
"We are back in the situation where our communities are
feeling an uptick in migration," said Rafael Collazo, who lives
in Philadelphia and directs political campaigns for the National
Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group.
"I have 27 cousins" in Puerto Rico, he said. "The most
educated have all moved away."
Nilda Ruiz, executive director of Asociación Puertorriqueños
en Marcha, hired Nazario and a handful of other social
workers from Puerto Rico and brought them to Philadelphia in
the last year.
"I needed experienced, bilingual staff," said Ruiz, who
recruited through an employment agency and went to Puerto
Rico for the final interviews.
"Native proficiency" was key, she said, because "everybody
assumes that if you have a Latino last name, you speak
Spanish, and that is not necessarily true" for Hispanics raised
in America.
Hector Rivera, 26, another Ruiz recruit, has a bachelor's
degree in psychology and a master's in family counseling. He
earned $8 an hour at a psychiatric hospital in Puerto Rico.
"I'm not going to lie. At first, it was a tough decision" to leave,
he said. But when he looked around his hometown of
Barranquitas, he realized most people his age were gone.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal in August, Joseph Stiglitz, a
Nobel laureate in economics, and Mark Medish, a Clinton
administration treasury official, attributed Puerto Rico's woes
to mismanagement but also a long history of Washington
slights, including underpayments for Medicare and Medicaid;
the North American Free Trade Agreement, which diverted
trade to Mexico; and the 1917 Jones Act, which grants
citizenship but also forces Puerto Rico to use high-cost
American shipping carriers for all imports and exports.
Move to independence
Puerto Rico's quest for a political identity has included drives
for independence or U.S. statehood.
Three nonbinding referendums on Puerto Rico's status have
been held on the island since 1967. In November 2012, more
than half the voters favored a change from the island's current
territorial status; a plurality favored statehood, although
supporters of the status quo rejected the outcome, citing the
large number of voters who left the ballot questions blank.
Angel Ortiz, a former Philadelphia City Council member, is a
prominent voice in the local Puerto Rican community. In an
interview, he said he agrees with arguments for a gradual
move to independence, and attributed Puerto Rico's woes to
an enduring subservience that hasn't changed since 1898.
"It's like rebranding Campbell's tomato soup," Ortiz said of
minor tinkering in the relationship. "You can call it consommé
of tomato, but it's the same thing."
Ruiz said she received some pushback from a Puerto Rican
academic who argued that Ruiz's recruiting on the island
contributed to Puerto Rico's "brain drain."
Ruiz said she saw an opportunity to serve her agency and
Puerto Ricans in need.
"I'd prefer they came because they wanted to," and not
because Puerto Rico's economy makes it imperative, she
said. "That's the rub."
[email protected]
215-854-2541
@MichaelMatza1
Michael Matza
Inquirer Staff Writer
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