Since 2010, Puerto Rico has lost almost twice as many people to migration to the U.S. mainland than in all of the 1980s and ’90s. Such an exodus might come as a surprise to some. But Puerto Ricans have very good reasons for leaving the Caribbean island and its beautiful beaches for the cold weather and concrete jungles of Chicago or New York City. High unemployment, cuts in education funding, high rates of HIV infection and dependency on welfare programs have convinced more and more islanders to look northward.

The financially troubled island now says it is unable to pay an estimated $72 billion debt, casting a pall on bond markets and pension funds. On the surface, Puerto Rico’s debt crisis is one of run-away spending on public welfare, with a diminishing small tax and economic base to support it. However, the island’s troubles are also tied to its commonwealth status: Puerto Rico is part of the United States but it lacks the local autonomy afforded to other U.S. states and electoral representation in Congress.

It is finally time for Puerto Rico to break free. Independence would allow Puerto Ricans to directly address their economic woes, but, perhaps more important, it will grant the island’s 3.5 million inhabitants the right to determine their own destiny. On July 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that Puerto Rico couldn’t restructure its own debt. Puerto Rico’s status as a U.S. territory bars the island from requesting bailout funds from other development banks. Independence, nationalists argue, would allow the commonwealth to make these and other autonomous choices.

For too long, Puerto Rico’s status quo advocates in government have heralded that tax incentives to the commonwealth as boosts for economic growth. But it’s a rigged system where profits made on the island are transferred back to the mainland, nationalists have maintained. In fact, in 2011 it was reported that as much as $1.38 trillion in corporate revenues from Puerto Rico were pirated away to places such as the Cayman Islands. And that this makes it more difficult for natives to complete.

“While the big business of the U.S. is growing in Puerto Rico, small businesses have to close,” Puerto Rican independence activist and one-time political prisoner, Elizam Escobar, told me in a phone interview. “Corporations are making more profit and the native economy can’t survive.”

U.S. laws have also undermined Puerto Rico’s global competitiveness. For example, the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 prohibits non-American ships from carrying goods between the island and U.S. mainland, which hinders growth by raising transportation costs and making it too burdensome for the island to have import-export relationships with other countries. In fact, both the editorial board of the New York Times and the conservative Heritage Foundation agree the regulations for Puerto Rico should be relaxed. Yet previous attempts to pass reforms in Congress have failed.

Puerto Rico also suffers from corruption. Last year, 16 police officers pleaded guilty to narcotics racketeering. The commonwealth’s political leaders have also been historically ineffectual, since real power rests with the federal government.

Furthermore, despite the belated media interest, Puerto Rico’s economic problem has been brewing for some time. The last 20 years have seen more manufacturing and tourism diverted from Puerto Rico, which is party to NAFTA and other U.S. free trade agreements, to other Latin American economies, and attempts to stem that flow have been ineffective. The manufacturing sector shrank by 4.5 percent from 2007 to 2012. And its unsustainable economic model has caused problems before. In May 2006, the government was forced to shut down for two weeks due to a $740 million budget shortfall, leaving 100,000 workers out of work.