Puerto Ricans Immigrating to America Essay

For most of its history, Puerto Rico has been controlled by an outside power, and its people oppressed. While Puerto Rico is currently a U.S. territory, Spanish colonialism has had a significant impact on the island’s development and identity. The history of the island itself is proof of this fact, demonstrating each step Puerto Rico took to reach its current state. By examining the stages of Spanish control that Puerto Rico experienced, we can determine how each stage affected the structure and identity of Puerto Rico.

During the 1970’s, Mexican Americans were involved in a large social movement called the "Chicano movement." Corresponding with the great development of the black civil rights movement, Mexican Americans began to take part in a series of different social protests in which they demanded equal rights for themselves. Composed mainly of Mexican American students and youth, these activists focused on maintaining a pride for their culture as well as their ethnicity to fuel their political campaign. Left out of this campaign initially though were Mexican immigrants.

Immigration involves the movement of a group of people from one country to another where they do not possess citizenship. There are many reasons in which people may leave their country such as employment, lack of resources, family, fear due to violence, exile, the American dream. In 1965, Congress changed immigration law in ways that allowed much more intake from Asia and Latin America than earlier. Before 1965, the intake was mostly from Europe. Since then, over half has come from Latin America—28 % just from Mexico. The share of population composed of non-Hispanic whites plunged from 84 % in 1965 to only 62 % in 2015 while Hispanics soared from 4 to 18 %. (Mead, L.M., 2016)

Showing up in sea tempest attacked Puerto Rico since Maria's landfall, President Trump offered a healthy round of congrats to government help endeavors and expressed gratitude toward the island's representative. In any case, the president likewise recommended Maria was not a "genuine calamity," made an odd and misdirecting correlation with the loss of life from Hurricane Katrina, and clowned about how the sea tempest would influence the government spending plan. “Puerto Rico survived the hurricane," President Trump rightly says, and "Now a financial crisis looms largely of their own making." Hard words, but true.

I relate each component with a historical event in Puerto Rican politics and also consider how through this historic mobilization Puerto Ricans have gained entitlement to more power, equality, representation, consciousness from other ethnic groups, and to some degree, social change. I focus on the Puerto Ricans’ migration to Connecticut, their development of ethnic awareness and power awareness, their realization of common interests, their competing ethnic projects, and the brokered representation they have endured as detailed in Jose Cruz’s book, Identity and Power: Puerto Rican Politics and the Challenge of Ethnicity. Finally, I examine an important point that Cruz only touched upon briefly, which is the idea of cultural citizenship in the Puerto Rican community. This added point helps us to fully understand the role identity politics played in Puerto Ricans’ lives.

The establishment of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico as a United States territory has been prevalent since the Spanish-American War in 1898. Along with Puerto Rico, Spain also ceded Guam and the Philippines to the United States, Puerto Rico being the most populous of all U.S. territories, currently. As the result of being an unincorporated territory, all citizens born in Puerto Rico are proclaimed to be natural-born United States citizens, however are “disenfranchised at the national level” and therefore, cannot participate in Federal Elections. Although the island have already developed its own culture nearly wholly independent from the other states, there are many similar aspects that connect both Puerto

Another large component of Puerto Ricanness is Race. All of the different cultures that have throughout history combined to form Puerto Rico effect their nationality, history, lifestyles, traditions, music, and foods.

What's a common location that comes up in discussion when someone thinks of a destination to get away from all the hustle and bustle of the Main land of the United States? Normally Puerto Rico isn't too far away from conversation. Puerto Rico is a beautiful place with the perfect climate and many historical sites to take that getaway that you have always wanted. Today we will discuss major issues in/of Puerto Rico, the significance of this research and data sources, and lastly I will describe the data collected and research found during my inquiry on the region known as Puerto Rico

From the late 1800's to the 1960's, Puerto Ricans began to rise to recognition as a dominating influence, creating chaos in American society. This comment is based on the immigration of Puerto Ricans to America, and the problems it caused.

The commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico), known to most Americans as simply Puerto Rico, exists as one of two territories owned by the United States1. Being a territory of the United States, Puerto Ricans possess common citizenship, currency, and defense. However, even though Puerto Ricans are United States citizens they do not pay any kind of federal income taxes. Therefore, they cannot vote in presidential elections. Puerto Rico is under the jurisdiction of the United States customs, and are allowed free movement of people and merchandise with the United States. They have established their own constitution, and have a greater amount of independence than possessions. Although

(Zaide 303-304) This started the wave of Filipinos wanting to migrate to the states is search of unlimited opportunities.

Since Puerto Rico was first discovered by Christopher Columbus on November 19, 1493, and Spanish colonization ensued in 1508, Puerto Rico has experienced all of these pressures of identity and culture.

Gonzalez gives us a brief history of Puerto Rico. He writes about the changes of the official language, which was English in the past and has changed to Spanish.

What was Puerto Rico like under Spanish rule, and how important is that rule to the formation of the Puerto Rican people today? To answer these questions, we must take a look at the history of the Spanish and their colonization of the island of Puerto Rico.

Primarily, enforcing the English language had the major impact. An assembly was held to determine the new educative system for the Puerto Ricans, controlled by the American government. It was a very centralized system where supervisors and teachers were brought without knowing the Spanish language or culture. As a result, creating great difficulties of communication. Despite all these cultural conflicts between such different cultures, great advances were made in the educational system in Puerto Rico. During the rule of the Spaniards eighty percent of the population was illiterate. Due to the Americanization, this reduced to more than half of the eighty percent and there was more opportunity to do other studies in the island. As the Puerto Ricans were exposed to an American society, language and culture, a new dialect rised up known as “Spanglish”. Which is a mix of Spanish and English words and expressions. While the English language was incorporated in the schools and society, still Spanish remained as the primary