National gathering of Puerto Ricans seeks to pressure Congress, Obama

Puerto Rican political, faith and civic leaders will convene in Orlando for a national meeting this week to develop a political agenda to pressure the federal government into taking action to help solve the island's fiscal crisis.

The meeting will mark the first time in decades that members of the Puerto Rican diaspora, including elected leaders such as Reps. Nydia N. Velazquez (D-N.Y.) and Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, will unite with leading thinkers and activists from across the country to forge a political consensus that responds to issues affecting the island and its inhabitants.

"We basically want to come together to tell the powers that be that the U.S. has responsibility over the economic crisis in Puerto Rico," said Jose Lopez, executive director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago and one of the organizers. "The U.S. has to own up to that responsibility, and the political parties have to take the issue of Puerto Rico seriously."

Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States since 1898, has struggled to emerge from a massive $72 billion debt burden and protracted recession that has sent tens of thousands of islanders stateside. Florida, and specifically Orlando, has become the destination of choice for that migration as jobs and opportunity evaporated with the crumbling economy of the commonwealth. Their modern migration narrative, however, has shifted their political and social calculus.

The recent island exodus has exceeded the numbers from earlier waves of Puerto Ricans who arrived in the northeastern United States, particularly New York, during the 1940 and 1950s. Puerto Ricans of the "Millennial Migration" are not only coming in larger numbers, but they are also dispersing into communities outside their historic destinations, said Edwin Melendez, director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College.

Puerto Ricans in Florida, now more than 1 million strong, have changed the political conversation there and are second to Cuban Americans as the largest Hispanic voting bloc there. They are also concentrated and spreading in Pennsylvania and Ohio and, increasingly, in Southern states such as Texas -- all places that could have political implications for both parties. Historic allegiances to Democrats in the Northeast mean less to the recently arrived migrants settling in the South.

By Arelis R. Hernández

National gathering of Puerto Ricans seeks to pressure Congress, Obama