Credit Tim Padgett / WLRN.org
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WLRN.org
Lourdes Cosme (right) talks with a customer at her family’s hardware store in Patillas.
“People feel hopeless,” she says. “With the hurricane we wake up every morning worried about, Will we fail? I have two friends, they are doctors. They took the decision to leave Puerto Rico two weeks ago.”
At the Patillas middle school where Cosme’s husband teaches, the librarian has made that decision too.
Melinda Arcaya already felt robbed of much of her pension by Puerto Rico’s financial collapse. Now, with no air conditioning at night, her arms and face bear large mosquito bite sores.
“I feel bad because this island is my home,” Arcaya says. “But Puerto Rico is a disaster. I may go to Florida, to Orlando. I’ll take any job I can find.”
IN DEMAND
Florida is indeed the choice destination for most migrating Puerto Ricans. Hundreds of thousands came to the state because of the economic crisis. Florida’s government estimates close to 75,000 have already arrived since the hurricane.
Many are also in demand: nurses, engineers, teachers. And that’s spawning a new industry in Puerto Rico.
“That’s our main purpose: to find them a job over there in Florida,” says Maytte Texidor, a San Juan attorney who represents the Puerto Rico human resources firm JHR Services. It’s now branching out to place skilled Puerto Ricans with Florida companies. Especially in South Florida.
Credit Tim Padgett / WLRN.org
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WLRN.org
San Juan attorney Maytte Texidor (left) with Walmey Rivera of JHR Services.
“There’s more professional people going to South Florida than Central Florida,” Texidor says. “I know gynecologists and anesthesiologists that have moved to South Florida because they get paid more. Or we know that Fort Myers needs skilled workers in construction.”
Grisel Robles just got a nursing degree in Loíza, Puerto Rico. But the hurricane wrecked her property and she can’t find a job there. So she, her paramedic husband and 5-month-old daughter came to North Lauderdale, Florida – helped by a local diaspora effort, Adopt a Puerto Rican Family.
“I came here with nothing,” says Robles. “We lost everything in Puerto Rico.
“Emotionally we were destroyed. But since Maria I have no time to think; we just reacted. Too many people are losing their work in Puerto Rico because of the hurricane.”
Credit Tim Padgertt / WLRN.org
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WLRN.org
A tearful goodbye at San Juan’s Luis Munoz Marin International Airport this month as one of tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans leaves for the U.S. mainland.
Back in Patillas, Pérez hopes to convince his wife to bet on Puerto Rico’s comeback. He has lived on the U.S. mainland before – but he knows the island’s revival requires younger, educated people like them.
“I’ve lived in Arkansas, in Mississippi,” Pérez says. “I know it’s gonna be hard here. We have to start all over again. But I don’t want to leave Puerto Rico. It’s like a paradise.”
But for now, a paradise abandoned – for Florida.
Source link : https://www.wlrn.org/show/latin-america-report/2017-10-30/leaving-paradise-will-exodus-for-florida-hurt-puerto-rico-more-than-maria-did
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Publish date : 2017-10-30 03:00:00
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