Nuyorican souls

摘要

MANY Americans are hazy about the legal status of the 3.5m Puerto Ri-cans who live on the island. A survey in late September by Morning Consult, a pollster, found that just 54% of Americans know that people born there are fellow citizens. There is greater awareness of islanders as one of America's largest immigrant groups, above all in New York, home to a million Puerto Ricans, sometimes dubbed "Nuyoricans". That image of migrant workers in gritty urban barrios-think "West Side Story "-is itself out of date. Since 1990 legions of Puerto Ricans living in northern states have migrated or retired to Florida, drawn by sunshine, cheap homes and jobs. In the past decade they have been joined by islanders fleeing economic stagnation and high crime, who have dispersed widely, creating communities as far afield as Texas and Ohio. There are about 5m Puerto Ricans on the mainland now, a fifth of them in Florida-more than remain on the island. They will cheer President Donald Trump's promise of debt relief. If it actually happens.