Puerto Rico Exodus to Central Florida Could Bring Unprecedented Change

The experts think you’ll be getting tens of thousands of new neighbors — estimates range up to 250,000. But, only 250,000? Think more — many more.

Consider that when President Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico earlier this week, only 7 percent of residents had electricity, and it was nearly two weeks after Hurricane Maria hit. Half still had no water.

Food, too, is in demand, even where distribution is easiest, and help hasn’t reached the mountainous interior of that 100-mile-long hunk of rock in the middle of the Caribbean.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it had installed 22 generators at high-need places such as hospitals by the president’s arrival, according to the New York Times, and the Army Corps of Engineers was deciding where to install another 100, as if this takes days of study.

The top FEMA coordinator on the island said the agency was “currently developing a strategy” to get aid to the interior. Health officials were warning the island could begin to suffer epidemics from contaminated water.

Third World conditions could persist for months, suggesting that estimates declaring Central Florida could get 100,000 refugees are woefully low, and officials in these parts better start planning for far more.

Consider what might happen if 93 percent of Floridians didn’t have power or water 17 days after a storm. Raise your hand if you’re not departing for your daughter’s house in Indiana. Those who stayed would be hanging electric company executives from their own lines in town squares for entertainment.

Luis Martínez-Fernández, a University of Central Florida history professor who specializes in Puerto Rican culture and society, has some predictions:

“We’re going to see an immediate influx that will surpass the 100,000 mark within the next two or three months,” he said.

And after that?

“I would say 750,000 in the next four years.”

Wow. Many will settle in Central Florida, and that number would shift the demographics, culture and politics in ways that are hard to anticipate. Today, about 320,000 Puerto Ricans live in Central Florida.

Let’s take a look at why Puerto Ricans, even those without family on the mainland, might want to flee — other than no hot showers in the foreseeable future.

Educated middle-class professionals and their children have been leaving Puerto Rico in droves since 2006 because of economic hard times, from which the commonwealth never emerged. Unemployment topped 11 percent in August.

In 2016, Puerto Rico stopped paying on its $123 billion worth of obligations, including pensions and government bonds, and government employees had to face the hard truth that they will never get pensions they earned. Over the last 18 months, the number of residents swarming to the mainland to start over has nearly doubled, from 50,000 a year to nearly 90,000.

And many of those folks are coming here. For the last 20 years, Central Florida has been the destination of choice, Martínez-Fernández said. Puerto Ricans like Hispanic-friendly Florida, a two-hour flight from home.

Now, layer in a storm that wiped out businesses, homes and schools. Consider that New Orleans lost 30 percent of its population after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and a decade later, the population was only beginning to approach pre-storm levels. Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents have to be asking themselves: Why stay?

For now, Puerto Rico is still focused on emergency evacuations — children are being sent to live with relatives, the infirm are coming for better health care. After that’s done, look out, warned Professor Jorge Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

On the horizon is a diaspora the size of which hasn’t been seen since the Irish fled during the potato famine in the mid-1800s, predicted Duany, an expert in Caribbean migrations.

“I think everyone is going to leave — anyone who can buy a one-way ticket,” he said.

Brace yourself, Orlando. If these scholars are right, the region is in for unprecedented change. How Cubans altered Miami could become the story of Puerto Ricans with Orlando.

“The history of Puerto Rico will be told as ‘before and after’ Hurricane Maria,” Martínez-Fernández said. “This is a watershed moment in history.”

Written and Posted by OrlandoSentinel.com - October, 2017