There are perhaps 2 million Puerto Ricans-island-born or, increasingly, mainland-born children of migrants-now living in the continental United States. They account for less than 1 percent of the total U.S. population and for less than one- quarter of all citizens of Hispanic origin living on the mainland.
Yet their presence is keenly felt. and large, they are clus- tered in a handful of cities: New York and its environs (the main point of entry for the 800,000 Puerto Ricans-one-third of the...