Why Obama's Puerto Rico visit is significant

>>> later today president obama keeps a promise to visit puerto rico . the first official presidential visit there since jfk 50 years ago. but it isn't just that he said on the campaign trail he'd come back. back home in the u.s., the 11 states with the highest puerto rican population also have most of the electoral votes he would need to be re-elected. president obama is scheduled to deliver brief remarks at san juan 's airport next hour. and jose diaz -balart, from telemundo is live in san juan this morning. jose, good morning. what's this visit mean to puerto rico and politically to puerto ricans now voting in the u.s.?

>> chris, great question. i think that for anybody here on this island, receiving the president of the united states , something that is really unusual, as you pointed out. i mean the last real state visit by a sitting president was john f. kennedy 50 years ago. now gerald ford stopped by on one of the economic meetings here. but this is a very significant visit for people on this island. many people are telling me that they wish he would come for more than just a couple of hours, and get some money, and then leave. but, i think that most people are aware of the fact that this has a lot, maybe a lot more to do with politics in the united states than it does with politics here. and so the visit is seen as, well, a nice skwres your, but eventually a gesture toward the puerto ricans who can vote. because here on the island, you know, they're not allowed to vote for the president of the united states of america . they're u.s. citizens . they have a passport, but they can't vote for president. and so those that are in the united states can. and in states like florida, chris, when you have nearly 1 million puerto ricans , that's a substantial amount of possible votes.

>> you say it's only going to be on the ground for a few hours. what's on the schedule?

>> schedule is he'll speak here and he's going to meet with the governor, republican luis fortuna who is having a heck of a time trying to deal with the financial crisis that he inherited when he took office. he won in a landslide. his popularity numbers have been dropping significantly. he's had to get rid of a lot of public government officials and employees. and so that's caused a lot of negative criticism towards him. but he's going to be meeting with officials and then he's going to go to a dnc function and then adios obama from puerto rico .

>> jose diaz -balart covering it all. thank you so much.

>> thank you.

>>> and you can watch jose each night on noticerio on telemundo.