Sovereign Debt and Immigration: How Wall St. Fuels the Migrant Crisis and How New York Can Take Action

On November 9th, La Tejedora's Loidymar Duprey participated in a panel at the SOMOS annual conference in Puerto Rico. The conference is the largest gathering of Latino elected officials from NY, and serves as a forum to educate officials about public policy priorities for different interest groups across NY State and beyond.

The panel  "Sovereign Debt and Immigration: How Wall Street Fuels the Migrant Crisis and how New York can take Action" featured activists from New York and Puerto Rico, who spoke to the impact of the debt on global south countries across the world, including Puerto Rico. Loidymar Duprey focused on the impact that the debt restructuring process has had on Puerto Rico's education, health care system and housing--and how a U.S. imposed Fiscal Oversight Board has been working with Wall Street vulture funds to push for extreme austerity measures that have resulted in the closure of over 300 schools, the slashing of the University of Puerto RIco's budget in more than half, and the closure of hospitals and privatization of essential services like electricity.

Loidymar was joined by Manuel Natal who leads the Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana party -- a progressive party that has emerged in the past years to serve as an alternative to the two party system in Puerto Rico. Natal offered a glimpse at how vulture funds who are benefitting from the austerity measures imposed by the Fiscal Oversight Board are also living in Puerto Rico and benefiting from the tax exemptions offered by Act 22. In other words, while many of them enlarge their pockets with extreme austerity measures imposed on the backs of Puerto Rican people, many of them also live in Puerto Rico tax free.

This panel is part of La Tejedora's efforts as part of the Puerto Rico No Se Vende campaign, a multisectorial campaign that seeks to end Act 22 tax exceptions in Puerto Rico and combat the displacement of Puerto Ricans across the archipelago.