On Monday Puerto Rico defaulted on over $420 million in debt, adding to the crisis that has forced 12,000 professionals to leave the island.
With no help coming from Washington, Puerto Rican Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla reasoned that when forced to choose between creditors’ demands and his citizens’ welfare that the needs of his people came first. Governor Padilla has been warning Washington of the impending default for a year.
Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) original March 31 deadline to address the Puerto Rican crisis has come and gone with no action. Approximately $2 billion in further payments are due on July 1st, another payment the island is expected to default on.
Governor Garcia Padilla believes a humanitarian crisis is impending as the island struggles to put gasoline in police cars and pay its teachers. As the situation in Puerto Rico worsens its citizens are left in an untenable situation forcing thousands to leave.
Garcia Padilla largely blames the stall on the greed of “vulture funds and their lobbyists” who overwhelmed legislative efforts to help the island. Overwhelmed with negative lobbying efforts, each opportunity to help Puerto Rico has been rejected by U.S. lawmakers.
In just the last 10 years the island has lost 9% of its population, causing a crisis that has created the largest migration of Puerto Ricans to the continental United States since World War II.
Educated young professionals are the island’s best hope to rejuvenate their economy but that hope is waning. “The island has made an investment in the form of their education but won’t reap the rewards of that. These migrants will spend their most productive years off the island and they take their economic activity with them,” lamented Héctor Cordero Guzmán of Baruch College New York.
