Mayra Rios didn’t want to leave her native Puerto Rico. But the constant bullying that her autistic son faced at school and the lack of services available to him were the last blow.

“Over there it’s almost impossible to live,” she said in Spanish at her modest two-bedroom Orlando apartment. “There’s a blow from every side,” she said complaining of the 11.5 percent sales tax rate officials recently imposed to alleviate some of the $70 billion debt burden.