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DavidEduardo said:


I wonder if there are any bilingual Puerto Ricans left on the island to watch English language network tv? Nearly everyone I know who was at least moderately English capable has moved to Florida or elsewhere on the mainland.
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Horrors! You, of all people, have stumbled into the "everyone I know" logical fallacy! Unless you know a demographically random assortment of Puerto Ricans (and "from all over the Puerto Rican broadcasting industry" doesn't qualify), you really can't extrapolate anything from your acquaintances' statistics.
 
CTListener said:
Horrors! You, of all people, have stumbled into the "everyone I know" logical fallacy! Unless you know a demographically random assortment of Puerto Ricans (and "from all over the Puerto Rican broadcasting industry" doesn't qualify), you really can't extrapolate anything from your acquaintances' statistics.
Click to expand...

Actually, there is data.

The percentage of college graduates (English is needed for almost every university level major) leaving the Island is at its highest point ever.

Hotels can't find bilingual staff, and this is covered constantly in the PR Hotel Association meetings and has been addressed by the Tourism Board.

PR Planning Board (which acts as an economic and demographic census supplement provider) shows graduates of private schools are the majority of emigrants today, while it was the opposite in the 50's and 60's. In PR, private schools teach English extensively or teach entirely in English, and nearly nobody in the middle class sends their kids to public schools.

The only English language commercial station on the Island closed 18 months ago for lack of revenue. The owner stated that the flight of English speakers was the root cause. In the 70's, for example, there were as many as 4 stations entirely in English at a time when the whole Island had far fewer stations. In previous decades, going back to the 60's, there was always a strong English language newspaper; today there is none and attempts to do an English weekly have been erratic.

Even the radio programmers who were reasonably proficient in English have moved to the US, where they are doing things like programming WRTO and WAMR in Miami and WRUM in Orlando.

I know of a dozen or so factories of US manufacturers that have closed due to inability to find bilingual staff, which they need to follow their paperwork, workflow procedures, etc. The Microsoft fulfillment center and the HP ink cartridge assembly plant are both discussed as being on the brink of closure in recent "El Nuevo Día" articles. There have been articles in the dailies about the need to require more English in public schools and face the problem that there are very few English language teachers left on the island as they have emigrated and are now teachers in ESL courses on the mainland.

This is one of those issues that is so well known on the Island that it's just accepted fact. Documentation requires looking at multiple data sources and market behaviours such as the above.
 
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