Comment by TheAceOfHearts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheAceOfHearts | Hacker News Reader

I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, but left to work in tech. As with any place, there's some good points and there's some bad points. Below are some points that someone moving to Puerto Rico might want to know.

In my opinion, their greatest achievement has been in its educational system. Despite its huge list of problems, UPR enables people of any background to receive an affordable high quality college education. In the US, you're basically forced to take out huge loans that might take decades to pay off. This should mean you'll get access to lots of highly educated individuals, although I don't know if that's the case in practice.

One of my biggest complaints is its poor representation in the US government. If you're living in Puerto Rico you can't vote in any of the US's elections, even though the actions of the president and congress could potentially affect you. e.g. You could get drafted and sent off to war.

Puerto Rico has its own constitution [0], which arguably grants stronger rights to its citizens than the US constitution. For example, wire-tapping is explicitly illegal. It also includes entries allowing employees to organize into associations and collectively negotiate with their employers, as well as go on strike.

An interesting point is that everyone is required to get a voter ID in order to participate in an election. This isn't seen as a problem, and getting one is incredibly easy. I found it incredibly surprising this wasn't the case in the US.

Food is amazing, but there's very little variety. Since there's so few people from different cultural backgrounds, you mostly get the same templates repeated everywhere. In the last decade it has been slowly improving. If you're a vegan or vegetarian, or if you require a gluten-free diet (i.e. coeliac disease), you'll have a hard time eating out.

Due to cabotage laws, you can't import directly to Puerto Rico. Everything has to go through a US port, which translates to increased costs.

Shipping stuff to Puerto Rico is usually more expensive than shipping stuff to the contiguous United States. I'd guess it's comparable to Hawaii.

Even though both English and Spanish are considered official languages, you'll have a very hard time living there if you don't know Spanish.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Puerto_Rico

Isn't there a crime problem? The murder rate in PR is like 30% higher than it is in Mexico...

Drug related crimes (gang murders) are an issue. Stay away from certain areas and dont do drugs and you will be ok. Same as in any US state. Other types of crime arent too bad.

To summarize, Puerto Rico's murder rate is higher than the murder rate of the USA and Mexico but no place in Puerto Rico is as deadly as the deadliest places in the USA and Mexico. Allow me to explain.

Using statistics from 2014 (because that's when I last did the research) San Juan's murder rate was lower than the murder rate of Detroit, New Orleans, St. Louis, Baltimore, Newark, and Oakland. It was a tad worse than Chicago. It's also important to keep in mind that most murders in Puerto Rico are the result of gang on gang warfare and just like everywhere else there are some good neighborhoods and some bad neighborhoods. Compared to Mexico San Juan's murder rate is a fraction of the murder rate of cities like Acapulco and lower than infamous border cities like Tijuana.

Puerto Rico as a whole has a higher murder rate than the USA and Mexico because of its ridiculously high population density. It's a small island (roughly the size of Connecticut) but it has one of the highest population densities in the states. Even in rural areas you're only a stone's throws away from your neighbor. In the USA and Mexico, however, you average the murder rate of thousands of safe and quiet towns with the murder rate of a few bad cities so you end up with relatively good numbers.

To give you some perspective, if you were to choose between Mexico and Puerto Rico without intimate knowledge of the two places you would probably choose Mexico because it has a lower murder rate than Puerto Rico. But if you were to choose between Acapulco and San Juan you would definitely choose San Juan because its murder rate is less than a third than the murder rate of Acapulco even though San Juan is Puerto Rico's deadliest city.

Lies, damn lies and statistics in practice.

What I mean is statistics can be considerably more misleading when the methodology is not explained. I found your comment incredibly helpful in understanding the point you were making.

I moved out roughly four years ago, and no longer follow their news very closely, so take my response with a grain of salt.

When I was living there, I generally didn't feel unsafe. As long as you avoid dangerous areas, I think the likelihood of something happening to you is fairly low. Although I'll admit I feel safer in Santa Clara. Certain parts of San Francisco feel pretty unsafe to me. I'd avoid walking around Tenderloin at night just as much as La Perla.

I've been told that even though the murder rate is high, it's mostly due to gang and drug related violence.

One of my friends that lives in the metropolitan area told me that in recent years she has felt less safe than before. She claims that she has perceived an increase in brutality, and that criminals no longer give a fuck. This is a rough paraphrased translation.

How is healthcare in PR now?

I can't speak for its quality, but in terms of cost it's much more affordable than the US equivalent.

According to the article, finding specialists in certain medical fields is apparently beginning to become a problem.

I would imagine an authority on Puerto Rico would know what country they were in.

And I would imagine that somebody smart enough to be so certain that Puerto Rico is US territory that they have to comment multiple times asserting their knowledge of the fact would also be smart enough to realize that the poster probably does know that but considers them distinct regions for most intents and purposes and refers to them as such, and that you would choose to just move on and still somehow understand what is being communicated. But I could be wrong. I'm not an authority on the matter.

Yup can confirm. Almost all of the rares specialist is in the metro area. Some of them have a wait of a few months. Some even don't take health insurance and are cash only since Insurances pay so low.

PR is a developed country in a developing country neighbourhood. Healthcare is cheaper than the US but some specialties are hard to get an appointment. The neighbours, DR Cuba, FWI, are a cheap ferry or puddle jump away. So for the common ailments, you have neighbouring islands keeping prices in check.

That's a sailor's perspective on PR healthcare. Since I'm not part of their health care system I looked at it as is it worth it here or do I sail 6 hours to DR. Antibiotics there are 50cents.

PR isn’t a country. It’s part of the US.

It's a territory. It has an independent government, constitution, country code, Olympic team, and elections. Functionally, it is a country.

According to Wikipedia, Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States.

Also, it does not appear on Wikipedia's list of sovereign states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states

It's not a sovereign state. If you're an American, you don't need a passport to fly there.

You didn't need a passport to go to Canada until relatively recently. That's fairly orthogonal to sovereignty.

Its a colony.

Each of the 50 states also has a government, constitution and elections.

For that to be completely true Puerto Rico would have representation in the federal legislature.

Puerto Rico has it's own Olympic team. Which is sort of a basis for considering PR as a country.

Does Puerto Rico have its own passport? Also, the UK plays as Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland in the World Cup but they aren't sovereign. So that Olympic argument doesn't mean anything.

Only US States are recognized in Congress. Puerto Rico, among other places is a territory which gives it a delegate to congress, but no direct participation. It's also not considered sovereign, which US States nominally are.

This has advantages and disadvantages... there's no tax, but also no Senators or congresspeople who give a hoot. Sometimes congressional delegations from places with big Puerto Rican populations will push for policy to secure votes on the mainland.

Also remember that it's a colony, and it's standing is colored by the baggage of colonialism, and there is a split between people who favor that status quo, statehood and independence.

Statehood will never happen unless there is a Democratic supermajority in the Senate.

We have a type of universal healthcare but its so mismanaged that its going to blow into pieces sooner or later. Most have private insurance that is on the expensive side of things given the local economy. For example, I pay $700 a month for 3 people and its not even that great.

Few people travel from Puerto Rico to the DR or even Cuba to get Healthcare.

"In the US"

Puerto Rico is part of the United States.

Technically it's a possession and territory belonging to the of the United States, but not part of it.

I'm aware. But Puerto Rico is a commonwealth, so within the context of my post when I wrote "in the US", I was referring to the 50 states and the federal district. I apologize if it wasn't clear.

I found this incredibly obvious given your context.

Given the content of the rest of the post, did you really think the author was unaware of that?

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