Emigration: What Does It Mean?

Over a 6-year period, covering 2005 to 2010, more than 178,000 of My Brethren left Our Island, a reported 28,000 in 2010 alone. The true number is almost certainly higher, suggests the Statistics Institute of Puerto Rico, but Let's just use 178,000 for now. It's bad enough.

What does this historic reversal of Our population dynamic mean? Beyond the evident flight from crime, limited economic opportunities, higher taxes, corruption (a particularly distinct form of crime) and diminished quality of life, what does this emigration really mean?

{You mean that isn't enough, Jenius? No. Many other places suck worse than Puerto Rico, but haven't lost almost 5% of their population. There is more here than meets the eye. That's what I'm here for. You're welcome.}

There are three distinct sub-texts to this emigration that also need to be addressed:

1) It is brain drain multiplied. The average age of Our latest emigré has dropped to 28. That means that most emigrants are old enough to have completed college and a graduate degree. Old enough to have gained work experience or career-related experience. Old enough to have established a network...that can be influenced to join the emigration.

My lovely friend Laura told Me six years ago, in late 2005, that nearly all her social circle had left Puerto Rico. Though most were above 28 in age (and thus in the median of the emigration age at the time), they were all connected in more than one way: school, work, hobbies, social organizations, etc. They moved en masse, with their valuable experiences, talents and energy leaving Our day-to-day society. As the study quoted in the article notes, many of the emigrants are doctors and engineers in their mid-30s and early 40s, key cogs in any society. Losing bright minds is never a winning proposition.

2) It reveals how divided Our society is. The Puerto Rican emigration of the 1940s and 1950s--a so-called "diaspora" by people who live inanely for melodrama--was largely a search for jobs and growth. But the latest emigration is quite divided: a very large group of "brain drain" qualified professionals who leave to expand their career opportunities and a shockingly large group of young, single men who move to the States...and don't get a job.

The obvious difference between the 40s and 50s and now is welfare, but there's a deeper current here: young, working-age men who can't or don't want a job here moving "there" to not work is a basic formula for crime. Or a backlash. Just as the "Puerto Rican welfare mom" was a cliché, the"Puerto Rican welfare bum" could become one. And Let's note that Our decades-long increase in women earning college and graduate degrees, exceeding the number of men by far, means We're looking at a society where women are generally better-qualified for most jobs than men, that they outnumber the qualified men and yet, must battle a machista society strangled by its own ignorance and barnacle-grip of the past.

It is possible that the emigrating men are a reaction to this "women are better qualified" trend, or that the "natural" tendency of Our men to think they can "hustle" their way to success--gansos ganseando, literally geese goosing their way up--has come home to roost. Or maybe the rise of the drug trade combined with the wholesale failure of the educational system has created an alternate path to economic success, one that involves investing several years in prison as part of the price. (We are exporting convicts...to Oklahoma. Steve, how's that for a connection between Us?) (Folks, that's a personal aside. My blog, My personal asides.)

3) This emigration means We aren't fixing Puerto Rico: it's headed for collapse. No, I'm not being melodramatic. Think about this closely: the economy has shrunk by double digits, the population decreased by about 5%, crime is rising dramatically [no matter what Our idiotic Larva of a (non)governor keeps prattling to the moronic contrary), corruption shreds the Island's socioeconomic fabric, education by imbeciles turns out ill-prepared adults (almost half not even completing high school), what passes for leadership in this country makes the average retarded monkey troop look like a Mensa meeting...

What, in Our panorama, gives Us the hope that collapse is not Our destiny?

Nothing.

Not. A. Thing. Because the people We need to right this foundering ship are leaving. With some of the rats.

To "fix" Puerto Rico doesn't take money; money is a tool, not a cure-all. It doesn't take a "status consultation" or "status fire drill" or "status tomfoolery"; We simply don't give a lab rat's cloaca about status and only demagogic pissheads ever have. It doesn't take "outside intervention," particularly not by Our gringo neighbors who are mired in fascism--President Obama's abject betrayal of the Bill of Rights now a fait accompli--and can't find their own lab rat's cloaca with a map.

No, only We can "fix" Puerto Rico. But the more of the key cogs leave, the harder it gets. Even when some of Our rats also leave, too many indifferent, ill-prepared, lizard-brain-first numbskulls remain...most of them in government.

Those of Us who have long seen what's happening would look around in 2005, 2006 and say "We have to get the others who think like Us together to make a difference." Now We look around--and this is hard to admit--We make plans to leave, because We certainly don't want to be one of the few left behind when the feces hit the fans.

Or the only one.

Damn it.


The Jenius Has Spoken.


[Update: 21 Jan 2012: From New America Media, a darker picture of Our emigration trend than reported in major mainstream media.]