Puerto Rico now has another problem on top of its ravaged finances and poor credit rating: citizens are fleeing the island in droves. Since the year 2000, Puerto Rico has lost nearly 300,000 people to the mainland—a large number of an island with a population of 3.6 million—and the exodus is only speeding up, with an average of 54,000 leaving the island over the past few years. And with the unemployment rate hovering near 15 percent, nearly double that of the mainland, the trend shows few signs of reversing.