Puerto Rican Residents Look Elsewhere For Opportunities

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I'm Lynn Neary, and this is Tell Me More from NPR News. Coming up, what should you do if you catch your boss breaking the law? Find out in our Now What Do I Do ethics conversation. That's coming up. But first, the economic downturn is forcing many Americans to restructure their lives.

That's especially true in Puerto Rico, where diminishing job opportunities are pushing an increasing number of people to leave the island to look for work. Many are traveling to Florida, and that's changing life for those left behind and for those in the destination communities. Joining us now to discuss it is Miami Herald reporter Frances Robles, and also with us is Xavier Vilaro. He recently left Puerto Rico and is currently living in Florida. Welcome to the program.

Ms. FRANCES ROBLES (Reporter, Miami Herald): Thanks for having me.

Mr. XAVIER VILARO (Puerto Rican Emigrant): Hello.

NEARY: Xavier, let me start with you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and what made you decide to leave Puerto Rico.

Mr. VILARO: The reason I'm here in south Florida is because how the economy is doing right now in Puerto Rico, as well as here in the U.S., and as a result, the professional opportunities for people who have a very strong academic background are either diminishing very fast or slim opportunities.

NEARY: What do you do, Xavier? What is your background?

Mr. VILARO: My background is especially in sales marketing and business development, for about 13 years, in the hospitality industry, as well as in the wholesale industry.

NEARY: And Xavier, did you have a job in that, and did you lose it in the current economic climate?

Mr. VILARO: Yes, I have. I was the VP for sales and marketing in business development for a company that we were doing business for about six years. We were a young company growing very fast, but we came to a point where we needed to have certain things that the economy was not letting us, and the clients that we had were getting affected also by the same thing and were letting us behind. And for that reason, the company had to close down its operations.

NEARY: So have you been able to find work in Florida?

Mr. VILARO: I've been here since April 14th, and the process has been much better than in Puerto Rico. The offers have been good. Some have not been what I have expected, but it's been fairly better than back home.

NEARY: Frances, let me turn to you now. I want to talk about the significance of this trend because Puerto Ricans have been leaving the island for the mainland for years. What is different about what's going on right now?

Ms. ROBLES: One of the things that I think a lot of people in the United States don't realize - two things. For one, I think everyone thinks that all Puerto Ricans go to New York. I think that stopped being true about 15 years ago, and it's especially true now.

And the other thing that a lot of people don't realize is that this is a very educated class of Puerto Ricans, like Xavier was saying. These are Puerto Ricans who speak English. These are people with college degrees, and like Xavier, who even have masters' degrees. So it's just a different face of the traditional economic migrant.

NEARY: Why are there so few jobs for professionals in Puerto Rico? I mean, I was reading that doctors, for example, can't find a work there.

Ms. ROBLES: The economy started to tank a couple of years ago. The recession that we're feeling in the United States now really started in Puerto Rico in probably 05 and 06 because of a number of factors. They lost some subsidies to corporations about 10 years ago, so that started a chain of loss of manufacturing jobs. There was increase in sales tax two years ago, so that started hitting people's pocketbooks hard. That caused another chain of events. So then it just kept on snowballing.

NEARY: So, Frances, what other economic factors are involved here?

Ms. ROBLES: If we think that in the United States, we're facing problems with our gas and with our electric, then they should go to Puerto Rico, where people are paying 22 cents a kilowatt. I met people, regular middle-class people, whose electric bills are as high 1,000 dollars a month, and the salaries are very low. People's salaries are maybe 30,000 dollars, and can you imagine spending a third of your pay on keeping the lights on?

Mr. VILARO: If I can talk about that a little bit more. A friend of mine has three restaurants back home, and he was telling me about two days ago that he was thinking about closing two because the average bill that he was paying before a few years back was around 3,000 dollars, and now, it's almost 6,000 dollars. It's an issue that has been hitting very hard the small and medium businesses back home.

NEARY: Are these new Puerto Rican migrants being well received in Florida?

Ms. ROBLES: That's a good question. Unfortunately, the story that I wrote in the Miami Herald last week didn't seem so because, if you look at the comment board, especially the comments from the readers in the central Florida region, they seemed a little hostile to the idea. They felt that they were losing the identity of their region, and I think you also saw a lot of that traditional discrimination against Puerto Ricans and not realizing that these are people that are actually better educated than the average American in the United States mainland.

NEARY: And is Florida having trouble absorbing these people economically?

Ms. ROBLES: I don't think anyone realizes they're there. I don't think there's a sense of educated Puerto Ricans standing on the street corner shoveling away people's jobs, but the fact remains that Florida's unemployment rate, we're leading the nation in terms of the recession, the layoffs, the housing market tanking. So that I don't think - I don't understand why Florida is the destination for people, particularly now, given our economy.

NEARY: Xavier, what kind of reception have you experienced in Florida, and I'm not talking about looking for jobs right now but just living there. How have people responded to you?

Mr. VILARO: Well, very good. As a matter of fact, I have family here, and I have friends here. So I'm very much comfortable with the area, comfortable with the city.

NEARY: OK. So you're not experiencing what Frances describes, which is that there might be some push back or some hostility.

Mr. VILARO: None at all. As a matter of fact, throughout my process here in these past four months, I've met and interviewed with a couple of very high top executives which are from Puerto Rico in different industries.

NEARY: How interesting.

Mr. VILARO: They're doing very well here.

NEARY: Yeah. What effect has this had on your family back home in Puerto Rico?

Mr. VILARO: It's been good and bad, unfortunately, of course. It's letting them go and moving on, but they're very much aware that I need to make this move as soon as possible, and it's for the better of my personal and professional growth, and it's something that it's out of our hands.

NEARY: Frances, it sounds like, if a lot of people like Xavier are leaving and the professional class is leaving, that that would be having a pretty negative effect back in Puerto Rico. Is the Puerto Rican government doing anything to encourage people to stay? What's the effect back there?

Ms. ROBLES: I didn't get the sense that the Puerto Rican government was doing anything about it at all. They never, in my calls when I was running my article, they never returned any of my calls to discuss it. I know that a lot of the economists that I talk to, they're concerned on a couple of different levels in terms of the long term future for Puerto Rico, when the economists said this is going to be a country of elderly and poor people.

On the other hand, this is a tremendous safety valve for Puerto Rico. If the unemployment rate now is 12 percent, what would it be if all these people stayed in Puerto Rico competing for the same nonexistent jobs?

NEARY: Xavier, what would it take for you to return to Puerto Rico? Could the government entice you back in any way?

Mr. VILARO: Well, unfortunately, I don't see that option very close in the coming years, and the reason is we've been affected by different companies that have been leaving Puerto Rico that were a strong part of the economy, from pharmaceutical companies, from biotech companies and such forth.

And the reason is that the incentive plan that the government was issuing and providing those companies has been taken out, and as a result, the labor costs have gone up, the minimum wage has gone up this year, and the next year, it will go up again. And the mixture of how the economy is doing and the companies leaving and more money and more money is not a good option for foreign companies and local companies as well to keep on doing business.

And that's why physicians, lawyers, engineers, people such as myself need to move on and look elsewhere because the people that right now hold positions similar to us are, of course, not leaving them if they don't get fired. And if they do, they need to move on, and Puerto Rico is not providing us with other options.

NEARY: Xavier Vilaro joined us from member station WLRN in Miami, and Frances Robles of the Miami Herald joined us by phone from the island of Turks and Caicos, where she is on assignment. Thanks to both of you for joining us.

Ms. ROBLES: Thank you, Lynn.

Mr. VILARO: Thank you so much.

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