Child Placement Requests From Puerto Rican Families in New York City: A Descriptive Study of Twenty-Nine Cases Known to Family Service of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, January 1, 1949 to December 31, 1949
Abstract
Under the Organic Act—the so-called Jones Act—of March 2, 1917, all Puerto Ricans were given citizenship of the United States, By virtue of this citizenship they are free to migrate at will to the United States, and, because of the serious economic plight of Puerto Rico, many of its people look increasingly to migration in the hope of finding greater opportunity and a fuller life. Most of those who migrate see New York City as the place to go and never seriously consider any other place. Lures to New York City through school texts, purchasable commodities, and radio pervade the social atmosphere on the Island, and a large proportion of the families has relatives or friends who, through letters and face-to-face contacts, provide information about the city. They also expect New York City to be free of that racial discrimination which they fear to encounter in many other areas of the United States. As a result of these inducements, there were some 200,000 Puerto Rican Americans living in New York City in 1948. As with all large groups of immigrants in the past, the press has focused attention on the problems they present in this new environment. They are not, in fact, regarded as immigrants, yet they encounter, particularly by reason of racial barriers, more difficult problems of adjustment than many of the earlier immigrant groups from Europe. Different cultural traditions, language and color handicaps, lack of industrial skill, all make adaptation difficult. In addition, they are faced with problems arising from bad housing in slum areas, change of climate, change of dietary habits, crowded living quarters, lack of education, poor health which they often bring from the island, and lack of knowledge of services available in the new community to meet these difficulties.
Subject Area
Clinical psychology|Individual & family studies|Social work
Recommended Citation
MacDonald, Kathleen Jane, "Child Placement Requests From Puerto Rican Families in New York City: A Descriptive Study of Twenty-Nine Cases Known to Family Service of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, January 1, 1949 to December 31, 1949" (1951). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30510238.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30510238
