is no such thing as a culturally deprived person. We all have different cultures. But what is the effect of this phrase on the society? It provokes a situation in which we are now creating a new class of American citizens. When I was a kid I used to be called "Spic". They do not have to call me "Spic" any more. We have new words for it, socially acceptable words. I can now be called culturally deprived. What does this mean in relation to some of the problems we are discussing? It means this: We talk about education in our country, but I sometimes wonder whether we really believe in it. As one looks at the defeat of bond issue after bond issue across the country, one wonders. But the problem is that by the coining of such euphemisms as "culturally deprived," we create a situation where parents do not want to send their children to schools with minority group children. These parents have been informed that minority group children are culturally deprived and consequently that they are going to deprive their children of the opportunity to develop their potential to the greatest degree. Therefore they say, "No, we don't want our children to go to school with minority group children." Moreover, because such parents do not have schools to their liking in which to place their children, they generate a demand for private schools. When we attempt to find support for really reinforcing the important public school system it is not there. The issue then becomes one not of what the problem is, but of interpersonal relations, and I think that much of what the civil rights revolution is about in our country is about just this, that as long as our children are the ones who are going to be labeled "culturally deprived," and as long as they are going to be seen as the cause of city's problems, just so long will we not touch upon the real problems. DISTINCTIVE PROBLEMS CONFRONT PUERTO RICANS Again, as a group, Puerto Ricans have some very peculiar problems. We are citizens who are strangers in our own land. We are the only racially integrated group in the United States. Yet, we are not a race. We are white and we are black and we are mixed. We find ourselves caught in the middle between two forces, and we cannot accept the values of either side, because if we accept either value, we will bring racism into our community-something we have never had before. There are anywhere from 6 million to 8 million Spanish-speaking people in this country. I am very pleased to see that the President has called a conference to discuss some of the issues of the Spanish-speaking groups in this country, for this coming year. Our problems are rather peculiar. We cannot resolve the problem of "poor people" by creating lump programs which supposedly cut across the board and supposedly have an effect upon all groups, because they do not. This is one of the issues that concerns us as a community. POOR HELP SUBSIDIZE MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASSES We also, I believe, should recognize something else about urban centers. The poor of the urban centers are the subsidizers of that community's middle and upper income groups. Let me give you an example. In New York City there are 78 volunteer hospitals. There are something like 40,000 nonprofesional workers in these hospitals. Their salaries are rather low. One of the reasons that their salaries are rather low is that hospitals cannot pay higher wages because medical costs are high. So a father of four will work a 40-hour week, and if he earns $1.50 an hour in a hospital, that means he earns for a 40-hour week $60 or about $3,000 a year. The U.S. Department of Labor has said that for a family of four to live at a decent minimum standard, it must have close to $6,000. When this father of a family begins to seek help to supplement the income of his family, to pay his rent, etc., from welfare, he is now seen as the cause of the problem of raising tax rates because he must be supported. And so, many of our welfare programs are actually subsidies for slumlords and the low-paying employers. In our communities, the people who are involved in this type of work are the ones who are blamed for causing the social ills. Thus, they work at low wages which help keep hospital costs down for the higher income groups; they do not earn sufficient wages to provide for their own needs but are seen as a problem when they seek aid from community resources. But, as I have shown, they are not the problem. The lack of resources in the community, and the lack of decent wages, those are the problems. These are some of the things the Migration Division has learned from the operation of our agency across the country. We see this in city after city. And so we say to you: One, that we believe very sincerely that there is a need to perform, to conduct a major study on migration and its problems in the United States, that the cities, which people are moving out of, frequently have problems which are beyond their scope. But equally, the areas from which people migrate also have problems which require a look-see. I do not believe that this has been done. I recommend that it be done. FEDERAL AND PRIVATE PROGRAMS SHOULD AID SCHOOLS Two, I think that from all that has been said in this committee about the problem of educating the so-called culturally deprived, and the fact that we know we are failing at this, we need to look-see again at what and how both the Federal Establishment and the private agencies can function to help the school systems of the country establish the basic minimum resources they need to meet the educational needs of the children, whoever the children may be. I would like to suggest further that we know that with living costs as they are now, even if we had $1.50 minimum, as I indicated before, we still would not reach the $6,000-a-year level, the minimum rate for a family of four. There must be some other ways of being able to subsidize income, and I do not mean subsidize in the sense in which that word is usually used, but rather to increase the wages of people. Certainly one way of increasing wages is to cut costs, and one of the primary costs that must be cut (or provided for) is housing. HOUSING SUBSIDIES MUST BE PROVIDED The housing program of our country by and large, the total philosophy of it has changed in the last 30-some-odd years since it has been in effect. It was first thought of as a program to provide housing for that one-third of the Nation that was ill-housed. In many cities today this program does not work that way. We are now providing housing for tax purposes and for middle-income groups, not for lower income groups. I believe that this subcommittee should give this some consideration. if we are going to deal with the core of our urban communities. THE PUERTO RICAN COMMUNITY I would like for a moment to get away from the broader issues and just speak very quickly about the Puerto Rican community itself if I may. There are about 1 million Puerto Ricans now residing in the United States. They live in every one of the 50 States. There are some 200, more or less, major Puerto Rican communities across the country. However, Puerto Ricans live in primarily the eastern seaboard and the Atlantic States. Throughout the country this group comes to serve a purpose. Prior to 1946, 1947, and 1948 there were something like 80,000 Puerto Ricans residing in New York. There was no such thing as a "Puerto Rican problem." After these years, their rising numbers became an issue. The fact that people come to provide a service, a basic service for a community, I think must be gotten across to the majority of our community, because I believe that once a people can see that low-income groups do in fact provide basic services through their own lives, we might begin to stop thinking as negatively about them as we do, and I believe that this is a need which must be highlighted by private groups, but I also believe that this is something which must be done by the Federal Government. I do not believe that the Spanish-speaking community of the country should remain an afterthought. We are an afterthought. I do believe that when programs are designed, and so forth, the realities of the condition of this particular group of people should be taken into consideration at the time that the program is being designed. These are some of the concerns that we have. These are some of the concerns that I believe tie in with some of the issues before this committee which I wanted to bring to your attention. There are many, many more, but I think because of your schedule, I will stop here. Perhaps I can answer some specific questions. Senator RIBICOFF. Mr. Monserrat, not only was your testimony, brilliant, but it was so full of common sense. I think you have added a very, very bright chapter to these hearings, and I want to thank Senator Kennedy for suggesting that you be here. I do have some questions, but since Senator Kennedy suggested that you come, and I issued the invitation accordingly, I am going to give Senator Kennedy the privilege of asking questions first. MIGRANTS MUST ADJUST TO URBAN LIFE Senator KENNEDY. I also think your testimony was very, very helpful. I was particularly interested in your suggestion regarding the study that has been made of intermigration in the United States. As I remember the figures for the city of New York, some 400,000 nonwhites, Negroes, who came into the city of New York over the period of the last 5 years, and 500,000 white people have left the city of New York. They have a major impact one way or another on that city, and the same thing is true to no lesser degree in Buffalo, Philadelphia, all of our cities on the eastern seaboard, and it is certainly true in our Midwestern cities as well, Negroes coming out of Mississippi, Alabama, and the southeastern part of the United States to our urban centers, so I think the idea of paying some attention to them and the Federal Government having some kind of interest in where they came from and what kind of programs could be developed so they could assimilate themselves into the community would be most worthwhile. It seems to me, as you pointed out, this is a major problem, in the fact that the people who come into these communities are almost completely lost because it is an entirely different kind of a life, and this is as different for them as somebody coming from Ireland or Poland or Italy coming to the United States for the first time. Mr. MONSERRAT. Senator, urban living is learning living, and one of the problems is that we do not teach people how to live in urban centers. Senator KENNEDY. I think it is a very good suggestion, I must say. THEORY OF DYNAMICS OF MIGRATION Mr. MONSERRAT. I think too that there exists, and personally I am trying to work on this, a concept of a theory of the dynamics of migration from which communities can almost predict and project what their changing population is going to be. There is a base for such a theory, and I believe that we are planning physical planning, I think we are doing school planning, and I think we are doing social planning without having the basic knowledge that we need for such planning. The fact is that we know there are two migrations in the urban center, there is a migration to the center and there is a migration from the center. The migrants to the center are generally people in search of better living. The migrants from the center are generally people who have achieved a better standard of living. Now if we are going to have almost lineal cities from Boston to Washington and on down as we have, the effects of these things I believe can be pretty much predicted, if we began to take a national view of the situation, so that we can recognize what area people are going to leave from and what area are they going to come to. Furthermore, is it necessary that 90 percent of our country be urbanized by the year 2000? Is it possible perhaps that something can be done in terms of planning, if we know how this takes place, if we know why, if we know something about the motivation, so that we can do something to perhaps change this picture a little bit to the benefit of the people? I do not think this problem is being touched or discussed at all anywhere in our country. Senator KENNEDY. That is a very good point. I don't know, Mr. Chairman, whether you thought it might be worth while to write to HUD or HEW to see if something can be done in connection with this matter, as a suggestion or recommendation. It seems to me it is a national question. Senator RIBICOFF. It is. Whether this is something for the Census Bureau to undertake, this is something very well worth going into, because there is no question that the immigration in this country is a fantastic number and I don't even have enough information on it. Senator KENNEDY. Maybe Mr. Monserrat can work with the staff of the committee and try to develop some ideas as to how we can follow up on this matter. Mr. MONSERRAT. I would be very pleased to. STATUS OF LOWER CLASS PUERTO RICANS Senator KENNEDY. What is your judgment as to the lower economic classes of Puerto Ricans in the United States? The vast majority obviously are in New York City. What is your argument as to whether they are making progress or whether their problems are increasing or diminishing in I think over the period of the last 5 to 10 years? What is your judgment as to the prospects for the period of the next decade? Mr. MONSERRAT. Senator, I think almost any statistical analysis will demonstrate that the Puerto Rican is the low man on the totem pole. He certainly has a lower income rate than all of the other groups. For example, a male Puerto Rican household head has income lower, for example, than the female of the majority group household has. I think if we will look at educational rates, we will find that un rate of dropouts, not only the rate of dropouts but the kind of high school diplomas the kids who do graduate are getting, is again at the bottom of the pile. They are not getting the academic degrees. They are getting the general degrees, which mean very little. I think if we look at the housing picture, we find that the great majority of our people are living in the poorer housing of communities. PUERTO RICAN COMMUNITY IS FIRST GENERATION GROUP I think in all fairness we have to say one other thing, and that is that we must, I think, remember that most Puerto Ricans have been in New York and throughout the country less than 15 years. I think we have to look at the demography of the group. Half of the group is under 21 years of age, and as I indicated before, 85 percent of those who were born in the States, the second generation here are under 14 years of age. The reality is that we do not as yet have a second generation to be able to mesaure, so that it isn't enough to take statistics and measure your white, Negro, Puerto Rican, or whatever categories one wants, and think that one is comparing the same thing, because in the other two groups we are comparing the second and third generation who have had an opportunity to do certain things, which the Puerto Rican has not, because he hasn't got a second generation yet; but at the same time, the reality of the statistics is something that is frightening. Furthermore, the reality that this whole second generation is in fact in school, and the future of this group will in fact depend upon what happens there, is something which is of great concern to me. I think we can say that in some respects the Puerto Rican group has moved rather rapidly. I think if we break down the group by years of residence, we find, for example, that where we do have a small second generation group, that this group seems to be doing |