Puerto Rican Entering and Settling Service records

During the early 1970s, a majority of Puerto Rico's population immigrated to the United States and settled in major metropolitan areas. The Puerto Rican Entering and Settling Service was founded in 1969 to assist Puerto Rican families that had recently immigrated to Boston. The Puerto Rican Entering and Settling Service was founded on the ideas of Conchita Rodriguez, whose previous activities included providing community-based bilingual education to Boston's Spanish speaking community and teaching Puerto Rican culture and history to the Boston Police Department. The mission was to help overcome cultural and language barriers, and ethnic prejudice faced by Puerto Rican and other Spanish-speaking immigrants. The Puerto Rican Entering and Settling Service members met new immigrants at Logan Airport to offer assistance, offered assistance to immigrants in emergency situations, passed out literature on available services, gathered names and addresses of families for additional help, made referrals to appropriate health and welfare agencies, and collected data on new Puerto Rican arrivals. On March 1, 1971, the program was officially launched with the cooperation of the Mayor's Office of Public Service, Traveler's Aid, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Pan American World Airlines, and Eastern Airlines. The program ended in 1975 and was taken over by Traveler's Aid.