Puerto Rico situation becomes political versus humanitarian

Those ill winds blowing out of the Caribbean are blowing somebody good, or at least there’s somebody who thinks they’re good. There’s always profit in somebody else’s misery.

Some Democrats in Washington see opportunities to make hay with Puerto Ricans who would settle for a drink of clean water and something to eat. Hurricane Maria, now safely out to sea, has so ruined the island that many Puerto Ricans are encouraged to resettle in Florida, a swing state with the partisan numbers so narrow that only a few more of them could swing it permanently to the left and to the Democrats.

Republicans see opportunities, too. Puerto Ricans, usually Roman Catholic and socially conservative (male brides, however lovely, and orange blossoms make an uninviting mix) have only a superficial attachment to the party of anything goes, as long as it goes to the weird and noisy.

Democrats relish the arrival of younger than usual imports. These are not immigrants, but settlers as American as Texans, Californians or Pennsylvanians, American citizens by a 1917 act of Congress. They can’t vote in federal elections and they have no representation in Congress, but once here all they have to do to vote is to register in their new states. If Puerto Rico can’t have statehood, it can move Puerto Rico to the mainland. Over the past five years Puerto Rico has lost 7 percent of its population of 3.4 million.

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