Recession drives educated Puerto Ricans to South Florida

AGUAS, Puerto Rico -- As a salesman for a health club in a suburb outside Puerto Rico's capital, Frank Oquendo saw up close how his earnings and the gym's membership base tanked along with Puerto Rico's economy.

Earlier this year, Oquendo's bosses cut his pay by 25 percent as a third of the Caguas club's members canceled their contracts because they were leaving Puerto Rico. After two years of soaring inflation and desperation, Oquendo finally packed up and joined his former clients, moving his family to Miami in July.

He joined thousands of middle-class professionals who have fled Puerto Rico in the past two years, becoming what some people are calling ``FloRicans.''

'Sometimes you feel like a traitor when people ask, `Why don't you stay here and work for your country?' '' said Oquendo, 35. ``How long are we supposed to sacrifice our families for unfulfilled promises? I want to help push Puerto Rico forward, but what about my kids?''

Central and South Florida are increasingly becoming home to members of Puerto Rico's middle class, who are fed up by an island wracked by inflation, unemployment and the perception of crime grown out of control.

The recession that recently struck Florida hit Puerto Rico first. It resulted in masses people moving here as first-time voters in a presidential election year, banking that the Sunshine State would provide new opportunities.

Sociologists say the wave of emigration could rival the 1950s exodus to New York, which helped reshape Manhattan's political and social fabric. This time, the Puerto Ricans leaving the island are highly educated professionals whose departure both provides a safety valve to growing unemployment and threatens the island's skilled workforce.

`COLLECTIVE SUICIDE'

''We are committing collective suicide,'' said Elías Gutiérrez, who runs the graduate school of planning at the University of Puerto Rico. ``This is going to become a country of elderly and poor people.''

Census figures show at least 200,000 of Puerto Rico's 4 million people moved to Florida from 2000 to 2006, including 14,000 to Broward County and about 8,000 to Miami-Dade. About half of Florida's nearly 700,000 Puerto Ricans live in Central Florida, particularly the Orlando area.

But census figures do not reflect the wave that began two years ago, when a budget crisis forced the Puerto Rican government to shut down for several weeks. More than 70,000 people were temporarily furloughed, so it was not long before nurses, doctors and police officers joined the teachers and out-of-work public servants who headed for Florida.

Many of them found jobs before leaving Puerto Rico as recruiters from employers as varied as NASA, Disney World and the Baltimore Police Department went to Puerto Rico to find highly skilled bilingual labor. The shutdown was followed by an unprecedented increase in the sales tax to as high as 7 percent, which hit Puerto Rican wallets hard as a political crisis gripped the U.S. territory.

Then gas prices climbed, and people saw their electric bills reach as high as $1,000 a month. Government statistics show food prices have increased 12 percent this year, and housing 15 percent.

''People in Puerto Rico make around $24,000 a year,'' said Oquendo's wife, Wilma Nieves, 39. ``Day care centers and private schools cost $600 or $700 a month. Our car payment -- for a Suzuki -- was $500 a month. We were falling behind in our mortgage and other loans. You can't just stay behind and complain. You have to find opportunities.''

Nieves, an educational coordinator, has decided to be a stay-at-home mom, and Oquendo just lined up a job with Humana. They live in the Fountainebleau community in West Miami-Dade with their children, ages 7 and 2.

Experts say it's impossible to know exactly how many Puerto Ricans have arrived in Florida in the past two years. But government estimates show some 65,000 are leaving the island each year, said political analyst Luis Davila Colón. READ MORE

BY FRANCES ROBLES
Miami Herald