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IMO, the greatest thing that happened to Puerto Rico was when the U.S. wrested it from Spain. But worse than Spanish monarchical rule, the "highly encouraged" mass migration to New York of a deeply humble and naïve people, for leftist political purposes, was one of the worst atrocities suffered on Americans - and Puerto Ricans ARE Americans - in the 20th Century. It altered the character of both the island and the mainland in the worse possible ways. Puerto Ricans are not bad people. They are a good people thrown into a miserable situation for cheap "liberal" electoral purposes. This was in the first half of the past century and we have learned nothing from it.

The money quote:

“The “callous exploitation” of Puerto Rico’s tired, poor and huddled, wrote the Daily Mirror’s Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer in 1948, “is one of the dirtiest crimes in the long and shameful record of practical American politics. None knows better than those who have primed and prompted and financed the exodus what they are doing to their victims and what they are doing to the city where they bring them. . . . These poverty-numbed, naive natives are sold a bill. . . . They are told that here fortunes await many and the rest can quickly go on relief. . . . The result is a sullen, disappointed, disillusioned mass of people.”

I touched on this sometimes back. I grew up in NYC at that time in the old Chelsea District - 22nd St, and 8th Ave.

Those PRs came flooding into our neighborhood (Brownstones) and we went down pretty fast. They’d pack a dozen people into two bedroom apartments. The landlords got wise and started charging by the person.

Marcantonio brought ‘em over here, promising ‘em $54 a week welfare check when a good job paid $80. With the large families, they racked up a bunch but still lived like they were back home. They sat on the stoops all day drinking beer and harassing the women, not just flirting, but getting lewd. A couple of times I took my BB rifle to ‘em to clear the front steps (they bugged my sister and I was 16 and stupid).

There were letters to the editors from people in PR saying not to judge them by the bunch coming up as they were their dregs.

We started getting them in high school and I made friends with a few, one who later became an engineer. Some good ones in the lot but by and large, their arrival was a downer for our area.